


The Chance of Freedom

by aralias



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s03e07 Children of Auron, Episode: s03e08 Rumours of Death, Episode: s03e13 Terminal, F/M, M/M, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:19:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Avon always said he could lead the Liberator crew more effectively than Blake – now he’s got the chance to prove it to him. <i>(AU of series 3, in which Blake makes it back to the Liberator.)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Chance of Freedom

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I stole large chunks of dialogue from several episodes in series 3, including 'Rumours of Death', 'Terminal' and... 'Children of Auron'. Oh yes.
> 
> I've written a DVD commentary, which can be found here http://aralias.dreamwidth.org/1944963.html

That his complete mishandling of the Bayban affair followed hard on the heels of his failure to steal the harvest of Kairos seemed to have (slightly) diminished Tarrant’s confidence. This, Avon reflected later, was very good timing, since he could just about handle one curly-haired know-it-all questioning his leadership, and Blake made contact a few days later. 

They were all on the flight deck when it happened. Dayna was fiddling around with her lute while Cally listened to some more conventional music on her headset, Tarrant was pretending to be busy at the flight controls, and Avon was manoeuvring Vila steadily into three-dimensional checkmate.

“Avon,” Orac said, breaking his concentration. “I am receiving a message from Blake.”

Avon’s eyes widened and he found he was looking through the chessboard rather than at it. “ _Blake,_ ” he said to no one in particular. 

“What, _the_ Blake?” Tarrant asked.

Vila grinned. “What other Blake would be worth talking about? He’s back. And things are going to be a bit different around here, Tarrant. Mark my words.”

“Are you sure, Orac?” Dayna asked. “It’s definitely Blake?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Orac said huffily. “He is on the planet below and has instructed me to operate the teleport for him. Do you wish me to comply?”

“No,” Avon said, without a moment of hesitation. 

Cally started to say, “Avon, you can’t just-”, which mean she was at least a second behind Avon as he ran for the teleport area. Behind him, he could hear the sound of the rest of his crew scrambling to catch up with him and Orac’s plaintive voice demanding that it be taken along as well. 

If it had been a longer distance then at least some of them would probably have overtaken him, but as it was it was Avon who slid into the seat behind the teleport and pressed the communicator button. 

“So at least one of the rumours was true,” he said. “You did survive. _Blake._ ”

There was a slight pause, whether of transmission or hesitation of thought, and then Blake’s rich voice crackled through the speaker grill on the wall. “There’s no need to sound quite so disappointed, Avon.”

Avon smiled and relaxed into his seat. For a while he’d thought that being on the Liberator without Blake would be a kind of freedom, but the way it had happened they’d just had to spend the past few months looking for Blake and worrying what had happened to him. Blake’s absence had loomed large over everything: his final statement of trust lingering in the back of Avon’s mind and compelling him to keep searching, keep worrying, and keep repelling Servalan. Now at least some of that was over. 

“There is no need,” Avon said, “to do anything truly pleasurable. The opposite is also true. I seldom find I want to do anything I need to do.” He paused – they could banter later. “Is Jenna with you?”

“No,” Blake said as Vila dumped Orac onto the teleport desk next to Avon. “I haven’t seen her since we left the Liberator. I hoped she was with you. What about Cally and Vila?”

“Yes, we’re here,” Cally said. She’d taken the other seat and was now leaning towards the microphone to make sure it caught her voice. “Avon picked us up almost immediately.”

“How kind of him,” Blake said. “Would you mind extending the same favour to me?”

“Of course. Stand by.” 

“No,” Avon said, laying a hand on her arm as she reached for the teleport control. “Wait a moment.” 

“What for?” 

“Yes,” Vila said, “what for? Let’s just get him up here-”

“Well, we must be careful,” Avon said. 

“Careful of me?” Blake asked. 

“Orac,” Avon said, smacking Vila’s hand away from the teleport control, “has been unable to verify your identity from your voice print.” 

“That is not-!” Orac began, but Avon removed the key and its voice fizzled away. He saw Tarrant and Dayna exchange glances. 

“Since you left,” he told Blake, “Servalan has become increasingly devious in her attempts to capture the Liberator. A few weeks ago she was actually on the flight deck. How can I be sure you are who you say you are, and not just one of Servalan’s agents?”

“You’ll just have to trust me.”

“That doesn’t seem very likely.”

“One of us could go down and check,” Dayna suggested, having apparently not understood what was going on. 

“Too dangerous,” Avon said, staring at her over the teleport controls until she held up her hands in faux surrender. “If it is a trap, you’d be walking right into it.”

“All right, Avon,” Blake said. “I suppose you could ask me something that you think only I would know.”

“Ah. Now, that is a good idea,” Avon said, with a smile. “And, as it happens, I know exactly what to ask you. Blake, what was it that you promised me in return for my help destroying Star One?”

“That’s what this is about?” Blake asked.

“Yes, that is what this is about. Well?” 

“I promised you command of the Liberator,” Blake said. “Assuming that the others agreed.” 

“And they have,” Avon told him. 

“Have we?” Vila asked. “Now, I come to think about it, I don’t remember us actually voting.”

Avon cut the communication with Blake and glared up at Vila. “You voted for me the same way you voted for Blake: silently. But all right, Vila, if you’d like a chance to air your choices publicly - it’s me or Tarrant. Which would you prefer?”

“What about Blake?” 

“Yes, what about Blake?” Cally asked.

“Blake is not up for election,” Avon told them. “He has ceded control of the Liberator to me. It is mine by right. But let’s imagine, briefly, that he were again in charge. I expect his first order would be to return to Earth to join the rebels fighting there.”

“Yes, and would that really be so bad?” Cally demanded. 

“Yes, it would,” Vila said. “You’ve heard the reports, Cally. They’ve been totally massacred down there. We wouldn’t stand a chance.” 

“At least we’d be doing something that mattered,” Cally retorted. 

“We are,” Avon told her. “By keeping the Liberator out of Federation hands, we are fighting them far more effectively than we would with our suicide.”

“It wouldn’t be suicide. We would be careful.” 

Avon chose to ignore this comment, which was all it deserved. “I agree that perhaps we would do better to develop a super weapon that would wipe out millions of innocent people and possibly destabilise the Federation. That is something else that Blake might do, whether we wanted him to or not. Not that it matters, really, what Blake would do, as he has voluntarily forfeited his right to command. I just thought you might like to consider your options, Cally, before you cast your vote. And now is the time to cast them. All of you.”

“Well, obviously, I vote for myself,” Tarrant said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. 

Avon smiled. “Ah. I forgot to mention - you don’t get to vote.”

“Because I was never a member of Blake’s crew, or because I’ve replaced him?”

“Because you barely qualify as intelligent life,” Avon told him, “so it would be unfair to the others if your voice had equal weight to theirs.”

“Now look here,” Tarrant began hotly, but Avon ignored him. 

“Well, Vila?”

“All right,” Vila said, determinedly not looking at Tarrant. “I agree that you’re the lesser evil.”

“Thank you. Cally?” 

“Avon, have you quite finished?” Blake’s voice said. “I would like to come up some time this year. It’s not very nice down here.”

“ _Cally,_ ” Avon repeated. 

“Fine,” Cally said. “But I want it on record that don’t like what’s happened here.”

“You don’t have to like it.” Avon pressed the communicator button. “Blake?”

“Don’t I get a vote?” Dayna asked. 

“That depends,” Avon said, dropping the communication line again as Blake said Avon’s name more and more emphatically in the background. 

“On what?” Dayna asked. “Oh, let me guess. On whether I vote for you or for Tarrant?” Avon smiled and Dayna rolled her eyes. “Isn’t democracy a wonderful thing? After that, I probably should vote for Tarrant.”

“But you’re not going to.”

“Tarrant couldn’t find his own way out of a paper bag,” Dayna said. “Let alone lead anyone else out with him.” She smiled at Tarrant. “No offence.” 

“Then we are all agreed,” Avon said as Tarrant scowled but wisely chose not to say anything. He pressed the communicator button again. “Blake - we are all agreed. That means if you teleport up here it will be onto my ship. If you are on my ship, you are part of my crew and you will have to obey my orders.”

“As you obeyed mine?” Blake said. 

Avon scowled. “I always obeyed your orders, Blake. Just not without question.”

“If by question you mean five hours of argument,” Vila muttered.

“And I’m sure you’d expect nothing less from me,” Blake said. “Very well. I agree to your terms, Avon. Now, will you please get me out of here?”

“Teleporting now,” Avon said and pushed the relevant lever. 

The air in the teleport bay shimmered into an unfamiliar shape and then resolved into a tall man dressed head to toe in blood-spattered furs. At least some of the blood was probably his own judging by the vicious wound above his eye, and there was snow caught in the curls of his hair. Avon tried not to feel guilty about not bringing him up sooner, and failed spectacularly. He also tried not to feel that everything was all right now, and failed at that, too. A determination to at least not actively show either feeling kept him in his seat and tugged his lips into a faint smile. 

“Is it him?” Tarrant asked dubiously. 

“It’s him,” Vila said. He grinned slowly and then the tension seemed to break as he and Cally converged on Blake, who grinned back as Cally embraced him and Vila gripped his arm. Avon let them get on with the business of welcoming back their ex-leader as he made unnecessary adjustments to the teleport controls. 

“It’s so good to see you again,” Cally said. 

“Which is not the same as saying you’re easy on the eyes,” Vila said. He grimaced and stepped back slightly. “Or the nose.”

“Did a wild animal do this to you?” Cally asked, inspecting Blake’s injuries. 

“It hasn’t been an easy month,” Blake conceded. “And the ones before that weren’t much better.” He gestured at his eye. “This looks worse than it is. Don’t fuss, Cally. I just need a long bath and I’ll be back to normal.” 

“Blake, I don’t think-” Cally began, but Blake was already nodding towards the others. 

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?” 

Cally frowned and then sighed. “Yes, of course. Blake, this is Dayna Mellanby and Del Tarrant. They joined the crew just after you left.”

“And they’re not exactly friends,” Vila said. “Well,” he considered, “Dayna’s all right. Sometimes.”

“Am I really? How kind of you, Vila,” Dayna said, with amusement. “You must be in a good mood.”

Tarrant grimaced and offered his hand to Blake. “I’m Tarrant.” 

“Yes, I should have realised,” Blake told him, shaking the hand without any of the irony with which it had been offered. “I met your brother Deeta a few months ago. You look at a lot like him.”

Avon watched as Tarrant’s expression changed instantly, the years and the smugness dropping away to leave the face of a young man who probably wasn’t completely insufferable all the time. “Deeta?” he said. “I haven’t seen him in years. How is he?”

“Ah,” Blake said. “I’m afraid I don’t know. I can tell you he was well when I last saw him, but given that he was helping me escape from Overon at the time, he might be less well now. You see, the Federation were very keen that I stay. I expect Orac will be able to find out for you, though.”

“So it is good for something after all,” Tarrant said, with a grin that Blake returned. 

“What were you doing on Overon?” Dayna asked. “That’s half way across the galaxy, isn’t it?”

“Getting shot at, primarily,” Blake said. “As to _how_ I got there-”

“Blake, I’m sorry to interrupt,” Cally said firmly, “and I do want to hear what you’ve been up to, but your eye looks infected to me. You need to have it examined and treated.”

“I will,” Blake said soothingly. “But right now, I just want to settle down, get out of these clothes-”

“Immediately, Blake. You do realise that an infection can lead to partial or even total blindness?”

“My eyes are red because I haven’t been sleeping properly,” Blake said, always unwilling to admit he was anything less than fighting fit, presumably in case anyone suggested that perhaps he give up fighting for a while. “That’s all, I promise.”

“Nevertheless, I would like to be sure.”

“I’m _all right,_ ” Blake protested. “I think I would have noticed if-”

“ _Blake,_ ” Avon said, and Blake turned to look at him at last. Their eyes met and Avon felt a rush of adrenalin as he said, “Go with Cally to the medical unit.” 

He held Blake’s gaze steadily, resisting the urge to change the look into a flippant dare with a quirk of his eyebrows. Blake had ruled with an iron fist and would answer to nothing less. 

For a moment, Blake looked like he was about to retort, and then he ducked his chin with a smile. “Fine. Come on, Cally. Let’s get it over with.”

The two of them walked off into the ship, and Avon stood. “All right, Tarrant, get us out of the orbit of this planet. We’ve been here too long already.”

Tarrant snorted. “Yes, _sir,_ ” he said sarcastically, but with a roll of his eyes he was gone too. 

Slowly, Avon began to laugh.

Vila came to stand beside him and they both watched Tarrant disappear around a corner. 

“Careful,” Vila said, with a knowing look at Avon. “They say absolute power corrupts. Absolutely.”

“And you wouldn’t want to sully your snow-white soul, would you, Avon?” Dayna said, and grinned at him. 

*

Blake walked back onto the Liberator’s flight deck about two hours later looking like a different man. He still appeared tired, but the scar on his face was gone, as was the stubble and the thick layer of grime and blood. Somehow, despite being on the run, he’d managed to put on weight, but as usual this just served to increase the power of his presence, rather than making him appear ungainly or ridiculous. Looking at him, Avon realised he’d been wrong to favour a lithe silhouette for himself. Fortunately he’d already seen some bulky jackets he liked in the wardrobe room. Perhaps it was time to bring them out. 

It was probably the weight gain that had made Blake choose different clothes to those he’d left behind on board the Liberator. He was still in green and neutrals, but the cream trousers were long again and better tailored than the ones Blake had favoured when he’d left. Above them he’d chosen a cream waistcoat over a white shirt, and on top of that a crisp single-breasted frock coat with gold and white trim, and brass buttons. 

He held Avon’s gaze for a moment as he descended the stairs, and once again Avon felt the rush of adrenalin that had been missing from his life since Star One, and then Blake strode past him towards the computer. “All right, Zen, where are we heading?”

They were alone. Tarrant had wandered off some time ago to talk to his brother in privacy, leaving Avon engaged in an attempt to wire his artificial Sopron into the detector shield. The work was progressing poorly, as Zen was resisting what it thought was a superior system, so Avon was pleased to have an excuse to temporarily abandon the project.

“That information is not available,” Zen said melodiously. 

Blake turned on Avon, who had been casually waiting for him to receive and react to this pronouncement. “Have you locked me out?” 

“Your access privileges are the same as they were when you left,” Avon told him. “Ask Zen if you don’t believe me.” He rose smoothly and walked over, the air seeming to become thinner the closer he got to Blake. “The information is not available because it doesn’t exist.”

“We must be going somewhere,” Blake protested.

“Zen, show him,” Avon said, and smiled as the view screen filled with stars. A thick line representing the Liberator worked its way through them, twitching every half-minute towards a new destination. “A completely random course,” he explained as Blake studied the screen, “avoiding major Federated worlds. Jenna was working on the programme just before she left.”

“She didn’t tell me about it.”

“Perhaps she thought you wouldn’t have a use for it,” Avon said. He looked up at Blake who was frowning next to him, his chin propped against his hand, and noted absently that he smelled different without the leather. His expression was perturbed, but not angry, as though Avon’s decisions were confusing, but nothing to get upset about. 

“The medical units have done a good job on your eye,” Avon remarked, feeling the absurd urge to needle Blake until he responded properly to something. “When you arrived you looked like Travis without the eye-patch. Now it’s impossible to tell that last week you put your head into a lion’s mouth, literally, as well as just metaphorically.”

“It was a bear,” Blake said as though this was nothing, and Avon smiled despite himself. How outrageous of him to play that down. 

Blake pointed at the screen with the hand that had been under his chin. “Even if we’re on a random course, we must be on a random course to _somewhere.”_

“That is one logical extrapolation,” Avon agreed. “And you’re lucky, you know, that your eye wasn’t infected.”

“So Cally tells me,” Blake said, finally provoked into an acceptable level of irritability. “But the fact is that it wasn’t, so your intervention, though appreciated, was unnecessary.”

“True. But, as they say, better safe than sorry.”

“That seems a rather limiting philosophy.”

“You would say that.”

Blake sighed. “Why don’t you just tell me where we’re going, Avon?” 

“Zen has already told you,” Avon said. “But all right, if you want to hear it from me: we are not going anywhere.” 

“We must be going somewhere. The ship _is_ moving. I can see and feel it.”

“We are not going anywhere in particular,” Avon conceded. “And really, why should we? None of the crew has your revolutionary zeal, Blake. Speaking of which, I suppose you want me to take you back to Earth.”

“No, not at the moment.”

That was a relief, although Avon hadn’t realised how great a relief it would be until this moment. He would have argued against it, of course, but given that Earth had been his idea, and that he’d effectively promised it in return for the Liberator, which Blake had now given him, it would have been difficult not to take the man to his own execution, if he wanted it. Perhaps manacling him in the brig would have been enough to save him from himself. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how interesting that had proved), they didn’t need to find out. Blake would stay here – voluntarily under Avon’s command. Really, that was the best of all possible options. 

“A rational decision, Blake?” Avon asked, turning to him, eyebrows raised. Blake snorted. “I will hold you to it,” Avon promised him. “The situation on has Earth has changed. Going back there now would mean capture, torture and almost certain death.”

Blake turned, giving Avon his full attention for the first time since he’d entered the flight deck. The difference was quite staggering and Avon had to fight the urge to step back – or into him. 

“Do you care, Avon?” 

Avon smiled tightly back to show he didn’t. “I meant for us,” he said. 

*

Avon had decided almost immediately that he wouldn’t use the new chain of command to humiliate or punish Blake. For one thing, Blake hadn’t used it that way himself and so it could be argued he didn’t deserve it. Even those of his orders that might have been construed in that light had been transparently made for reasons other than simple malice or discipline. Avon had complained about being left behind on the trip to Freedom City, but since he and Vila had promptly risked their own and everyone else’s lives in a highly dangerous scam as soon as Blake’s back was turned, it was difficult to argue that Blake’s fears about them being a liability had not been justified. 

Leaving aside the moral implications of not paying Blake back in kind, Avon was also keen that Blake never be allowed to say that he’d led more fairly. For all his talk of freedom, Blake had been a dictator; Avon believed in democracy – for a given value of democracy, anyway. The point was that people who had a valid contribution to make should be allowed to make it, and people whose lives were being risked should be fully appraised of the danger and have a chance to object. It was demonstrably a better system than Blake’s, and if the people under his command were at all sensible they would choose Avon every time. 

It also made sense not to give Blake anything easy to kick against. Avon had no doubt that Blake would try and organise a mutiny at some point, but if he could delay it for as long as possible? Well, then it would seem like _mutiny,_ rather than Blake taking back what was his. 

That meant that ordering Blake to sweep the corridors with a toothbrush was out of the question. What it didn’t mean, though, was that Blake would have an easy time of things. Avon hadn’t altered the duty roster since Star One. There had been no need – two members of the crew had not returned, two had arrived. Dayna had taken Blake’s duties and watch, and Tarrant had taken Jenna’s, under the impression that they had been Blake’s and that this would give him some right to Blake’s command. As usual with Tarrant, he’d been wrong on all counts. 

With Blake back aboard, though, the roster would, by necessity, need to change. Avon took vicious pleasure in scrupulous fairness. That meant Blake (and Dayna, although that was beside the point) would have to learn how to cook after all. 

It had always been an open secret. Blake stood more watches than anyone else and at unfriendly hours, but never entered the kitchen or the laundry room. He didn’t complain when he saw the new roster, but he did give Avon a look at clearly said _‘so, this is how you’re playing it,’_ and Avon smiled pleasantly back at him. 

Dayna had been stranded out in the middle of nowhere with just her father and sister for most of her life, and apparently already knew how to cook. Avon realised with some embarrassment that he probably should have asked. As for Blake – there was a week of food poisoning, but he was a fast learner. By the second week of the new roster he was producing food that was worthy of bearing that name, and by the third food that was better than anything Tarrant or Vila had ever managed to produce. 

As it happened, and as Avon knew he should have guessed, it was soon obvious that Blake’s motivation for manipulating the roster had very little to do with time in the kitchen and almost everything to do with time on the flight deck. While he did the new tasks he was assigned, he also lingered around the flight deck in approximately the same patterns that had characterised his earlier watches: most of the ship-board night, early morning, and then most of the day. Clearly he wanted to be around if anything went wrong, particularly if almost everyone else was sleeping. 

It was obviously a sign of his arrogance, and a dangerous sign that he still thought he deserved to know everything that was going on aboard the Liberator, but Avon had expected nothing less of him. Ordering Blake back to bed every night would be something of a waste of time, since he would undoubtedly refuse and since he was entirely correct to think he was a good man to have around in a crisis. Therefore, rather than attempt to curb Blake’s behaviour, Avon decided to play him at his own game. He had previously slept or worked through other people’s night watches, but if Blake was going to be on the flight deck at all hours then so was he. 

“If you’re both staying, can I just go to bed?” Vila asked plaintively, one night as Blake paced in front of Zen’s screen and Avon made minute and unnecessary adjustments to the heating systems. 

“No,” Avon said at the same time as Blake did. Blake turned back to glance at him and Avon raised his eyebrows until Blake turned back to Zen. 

Vila heaved a sigh and tried to adjust his position, wedged between the control panels and the flight seat, into something more comfortable. His eyes flickered shut, completing his transformation into a highly alert night watchman. 

Avon observed him for a while and then relented. “All right, go to bed then, if you insist on being useless.”

Vila was suddenly very alert. “’Night then,” he said and dashed off before Avon could change his mind. Blake looked round again, apparently mildly curious. Avon stared challengingly at him, and Blake went off to check the communication logs.

Avon rearranged the duty roster only a few weeks after his first arrangement. Unlikely as it seemed, Vila was right. There was no point in keeping the rest of the crew awake if he and Blake were going to stand the night watches anyway. 

It was never exactly comfortable to be alone with Blake for hours, but then it never had been. In Blake’s defence, he did leave Avon get on with whatever jobs he’d decided to fill the night with, but without actively intervening he was nonetheless incredibly distracting. The air seemed to hum with his presence as though it were filled with laser beams connected back to Blake’s consciousness. If Avon broke one by moving, then Blake would know. Sometimes he glanced up accidentally and found Blake watching him consideringly, presumably waiting for him to slip up. Sometimes, though rarely, Avon looked up and Blake wasn’t looking at him at all. In those circumstances, Avon would watch him for a while, sprawled out over the sofa with a book or pacing in front of Zen, and try to work out what it was that was so compelling about him and how he could replicate or resist it. Then, eventually, Blake would realise he was being watched and turn an enquiring stare on him in return, and Avon would smile to let him know he, too, was being judged and unfavourably. 

Things got easier once Blake suggested they play chess to pass some of the hours. The simple task provided structure for conversation, as well as distraction, and an excuse to watch each other without appearing to. Blake was a good player, but generally Avon was better, which was gratifying. 

Still, even with the tension lowered due to the game, it was always something of a relief when they were intercepted by pursuit ships. Blake instinctively barked orders and Avon instinctively ignored him, but they were both experienced enough to get the Liberator out of danger without needing to summon the others. After that, Avon usually allowed himself to briefly grin back at Blake and mean it, before the shutters had to come down again. 

Only once in two months did the situation become desperate – three pursuit ships appearing out of nowhere and shepherding them steadily towards a planet, with no room to manoeuvre enough to escape or to fire back on them. Fortunately, it was the kind of three-dimensional puzzle that Blake excelled at, and he was soon suggesting the idea of a reckless slingshot around a nearby moon. Avon finished shouting through the comm. at Tarrant to get onto the flight deck immediately, and turned to shout at Blake, who must surely be aware that his plan had no chance of success unless they could achieve standard by fourteen. 

“We’re at almost full power,” Blake insisted, which was true, since Avon had been careful to build in periods of revitalisation in Jenna’s initial course programme. “So we could hold that speed for – what? An hour?”

“Perhaps two,” Avon conceded, “but that doesn’t mean-” the ship shook as another plasma bolt made contact with the hull and Avon grabbed hold of the console, “that we _should.”_

“Ten minutes should be more than enough time to get us into orbit and out the other side.”

“True, but the Liberator was not built to withstand standard by fourteen. We have only achieved that speed once, and never by our design. You’d need a first-class pilot to hold us together, and even then Zen will understandably refuse to commit suicide-”

“Well, can’t you change his mind?”

“More difficult than it sounds. Zen is as stubborn as you are.”

“But you can do it.”

“Naturally, but it will take a little time-”

Another shot hit the Liberator sending Blake (unwisely not holding onto anything) staggering, and Avon instinctively reached out to steady him. 

“A little time may be all we have,” Blake said, glancing at Zen’s screen, which was displaying their position in relation to the planet, and then down at Avon. His jaw was set with determination, and his hair was wilder than usual. He was wearing dark green today, double-breasted, with two lines of buttons describing the edges of his chest. Up close, he looked almost unbearably handsome. 

Tarrant’s footsteps sounded in the corridor and Avon let go of Blake. As though he’d been burned, the areas where they’d touched continued to tingle, but Avon was used to that and it was not unpleasant.

“And here’s our first-class pilot,” Blake said as Tarrant burst onto the flight deck, out of breath, his shirt hanging open. As Avon pulled open the drawers containing Zen’s circuitry, Blake ushered Tarrant towards the pilot’s position and began explaining what they were going to do, despite Tarrant’s protestations. By now Avon had finished being incredulous and had now started on grudging admiration. It was difficult not to be impressed by Blake’s ability to see a way out when no one else did.

 _“Cally,”_ Avon heard him call as the rest of the crew arrived, “help Avon with Zen. Vila, get ready to fire on those pursuit ships. We’ll be coming round fast in about six minutes. Dayna, you and I need to talk about starboard-facing weaponry-”

“What do you need me to do?” Cally asked, at Avon’s elbow. 

Avon handed her a laser probe. “The auto-repair circuits need to be prevented from activating when the ship begins to break apart. They’re too much of a strain on the power banks. With those circuits operational, we’ll stay in one piece but we _won’t_ be able to achieve maximum velocity. So, we need to inject them here-”

“Avon, are you ready?” Blake shouted.

“One more minute should do it,” Avon told him, indicating to Cally where she should insert the probe as he spliced together more sections of Zen’s wiring. 

“All right,” Blake said, “Tarrant start increasing our speed... _now.”_

Avon dug his fingers into the computer casing as the Liberator accelerated, but he lost his grip as the ship swung round the planet. Cally, too, was hurled over to the left and Avon had to twist in midair to avoid crushing her as he hit the floor. A shooting pain in his left arm told him he’d forgotten to slap his hands down to slow his fall. 

_“Now,_ Vila,” Blake insisted, and on the screen above Avon one of the pursuit ships that was now facing them exploded. _“Again.”_ And there was a second explosion. The final pursuit ship managed a last shot that shook the Liberator’s flight deck and cracked Avon’s wrist a second time, and then it, too, was destroyed. Vila and Dayna whooped.

“Speed reducing to standard by four,” Tarrant announced cheerfully. 

Blake clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done, Tarrant.”

“It was your idea.” 

“Ah, but I couldn’t have done it.” 

Sourly, Avon pushed himself up off the floor, favouring his injured arm. Now everything was over, it was much easier to resent Blake the quick thinking that had saved their lives and endeared him to everyone in the process. Cally put out a hand to help him up, and Avon was in enough pain that he allowed it. 

“Are you all right?” she asked. 

“Not really,” Avon said, noting, though he hadn’t really expected it to, that Cally’s touch did nothing for him. “I’m going to the medical bay. Vila, take over my watch.” 

He strode out, purposefully not looking at any of the others. As he reached the corridor, he heard Vila’s plaintive whine from back on the flight deck: 

“I don’t have to, do I, Blake?”

 _Oh god,_ Avon thought grimly. _It’s happening already._

*

“Don’t you find it all a bit _pointless?”_ Blake asked a few days later. 

All the Liberator crew were sitting around on the flight deck in the wake of a successful raid on a Federation transport vessel. Apart from a relatively pleasant stay with Tarrant’s brother Deeta, this expedition had been the first time the crew had left the Liberator since Blake’s arrival. It had been Avon’s plan, and Avon had led the boarding party while Tarrant and Blake had been left back on the Liberator. That could have been why the plan had succeeded. At any rate, Avon was pleased with it and the result: five crates of perfect diamonds. He was not surprised, though, that Blake wasn’t. 

“Trick question,” Avon said, without looking up. “Nobody answer that.”

“Yes,” Cally said wearily. 

“All _what?”_ Tarrant said deliberately from the pilot’s position. Avon turned to glare at him and Tarrant gave him an infuriating smile.

 _“Exactly,”_ Blake said. “We’re doing _nothing,_ achieving _nothing-”_

“You call two hundred diamonds nothing?” Vila asked. He exhaled. “How many diamonds _would_ impress you?” 

“Vila,” Blake said wearily, “I wouldn’t be impressed by a _million_ diamonds-”

“You’re a hard man to impress.” 

“No, what _he_ is,” Avon countered, “is a man without aesthetic sensibilities.” 

“Because, Vila,” Blake said, as though he hadn’t heard this, “a million diamonds would be _just_ as pointless as two hundred.”

“They’re not pointless,” Vila said, looking hurt on the diamonds’ behalf. He picked one of them off the top of the crates stacked next to the sofa and turned it in the light. “That’s a brilliant cut, that is,” he said as it sparkled. “And a perfect one at that.”

“But you’re not doing anything with them,” Blake insisted. “You can’t spend them or use them for anything. You’re not even wearing them. They’re completely and utterly pointless.”

“Would you would prefer it if we only robbed from the rich to give to the poor?” Avon asked. “Perhaps we should find a stricken farming community and gift the diamonds to them.”

“Eh?” Vila said.

“No, of course not,” Blake said. “What would farmers do with a crate of diamonds?”

“Well, then,” Avon said. 

“You’re not really going to give the diamonds away, are you?” Vila asked piteously. “Avon?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Oh, stop ruining it for him,” Dayna said playfully. “The diamonds are very pretty, Vila.”

“And we’re not giving them away,” Tarrant said, presumably more for his own piece of mind than Vila’s. 

“No. And at least the Federation doesn’t have them,” Dayna finished. 

“True,” Blake said, “but I would have thought your ambitions concerning Servalan extended a little further than ruining her wardrobe, Dayna.” Dayna’s grin closed down immediately, but Blake continued as though he hadn’t noticed. “Not that it’ll be ruined for long. Does anyone honestly think that this theft will stop Servalan if she really wants a new brooch? It won’t even be a setback to her. She’ll just send the workers back into the dangerous mines to collect more diamonds. Probably without paying them a second time.” 

Cally stood and left the flight deck without saying a word. Avon watched her go and then said, 

“That assumes she paid for the diamonds the first time.” 

“That’s hardly the point,” Blake said. 

“I disagree,” Avon said. “You’re trying to argue that what we’ve done has made these people’s lives worse. Knowing Servalan, I find that unlikely.”

“No,” Blake said as Dayna, Tarrant and Vila’s heads turned towards him. “What _I’m_ trying to argue, Avon, is that you could do better. You _should_ do better. I mean, _really_ – look at yourselves. You have a top-class pilot, a highly innovative weapons designer, a telepathic guerrilla fighter, probably the best safecracker and computer technician in the Federated worlds, not to mention the most advanced computer, and an alien spaceship of unmatched speed and strength, and _this_ is the best you could come up with? Stealing something you have no practical use for? _Probably_ not making anyone’s lives worse?”

Avon scowled as three heads turned from Blake back to him. “Stop trying to manipulate my crew, Blake.” 

“Why?” Blake said pleasantly. “Do you think it’s working?”

*

Avon slept badly for the next few days as his agile mind tried to work out what Blake’s next move would be and whether he had any chance of countering it. This was unfortunate, because when Blake’s next move came it was in the form of a call that sounded in Avon’s room only a few hours after he’d finally dozed off. 

“This had better be important,” he growled into the comm. unit. 

“We’re getting a message from Del Grant,” Cally’s voice said. “He’s having trouble with one of his liberation schemes and, although he doesn’t say so, it sounds as though it could be fatal. Is _that_ important?” 

“Not to us,” Avon said. “Whatever he’s broadcast will have been picked up by the Federation by now. It’s something of a shame, but there’s nothing we can do for him now.” 

So, Avon thought, both Grants were dead, or as good as. Once again, it wasn’t exactly his fault, but Avon knew he would blame himself anyway. 

“Orac says the message was beamed through the teleport bracelet we left with Grant,” Cally said just as Avon was about to terminate the connection. “It’s possible the transmission has been picked up, but not likely.” 

Avon turned the matter over in his head. Just because he’d been sentimental and guilty a moment ago when there was nothing to be done didn’t mean he was about to run head first into whatever danger Grant was mixed up now there was a slim chance of survival. Still – perhaps he owed it to Anna’s brother to at least hear his request.

“All right,” he told Cally. “Get Orac to make a secure connection and tell Grant I’ll be on the flight deck to talk to him in twenty minutes.”

“Orac has already made the connection, Avon,” Cally said. “Blake’s talking to Grant now-”

“You called _Blake_ before me?”

“He picked the call up in his room,” Cally explained. 

"What?"

“You _did_ put him in charge of communications,” Cally said reproachfully. This was true, but Avon had made the assignment under the impression that it would keep Blake _out_ of trouble. Even slow-witted Gan had performed the job competently, so it shouldn’t have been beyond Blake, but apparently _that_ was now the problem.

Avon cut the connection and got to his feet. There was definitely no time to change out of his loose sleeping clothes, but he did consider his boots briefly before dismissing them. The time it would take to pull them on was time Blake could be using to pledge their allegiance to the Cause. Damn Cally for not saying anything sooner. 

The Liberator’s floors were cold beneath his feet as he ran through the corridors. When he was almost there, he slowed down and strolled with as much dignity as he could onto the flight deck. Blake and Cally looked up as he entered. Both looked like they’d only just stopped laughing. 

“Put him on the main screen,” Avon snapped, and strode over to it as Del Grant’s face appeared in front of what looked like a cave wall. “All right, Del, what is it this time? Another planet about to implode?”

“Nothing that crude,” Grant said, straight to business as well. “This time the problem is people, not machines.”

“It generally is.”

“When I accepted this job a month ago I was told that the rebels here were organised and that they had weapons.”

“So, they lied. So, what? You must be used to that.”

“Oh, they have weapons all right,” Grant said. “Take a look at this.” He held up a sword with a gem-encrusted pommel. 

“Decorative, but I can see your problem,” Avon said as Blake left his console and came down to join him. He glanced down at Avon’s bare feet, but mercifully said nothing, though the corners of his mouth twitched. 

“The Phelosians put their energy into art, rather than war,” Grant explained as Avon scowled at Blake and Blake indicated he should look back at the screen. “That’s why they needed me.”

“So, why didn’t you get out as soon as you made this discovery? You’ve been there a month. Why?”

“Like I told you,” Grant said. “They needed me.”

“And I expect they raised your salary when you complained.”

“They did, but that’s not the point.”

“What Grant needs,” Blake explained, “is advanced weaponry – well, we’ve got Dayna for that. He also needs people to lead the splinter groups if they’re to have any chance of attacking the Federation base on multiple fronts.”

“And for that,” Avon said, turning to him, “we have-”

“-me. Yes, the thought had crossed my mind.”

“Actually, I need more of your people,” Grant said. “My ideal plan involves a five-pronged attack, preferably before daybreak. I’d like at least four of you to come down, if that’s possible.”

“I would be willing to go,” Cally said, still monitoring their progress from her position. “As would the others, I’m certain of it.”

Avon favoured Grant with a hard stare. “And you’re asking me to believe that nobody down there could lead their own men.” 

“Right.”

“Well, I don’t believe it.”

“Why do you think they hired me?”

“We’re only an hour away,” Blake explained before Avon could reply. “That gives us enough time to gather everyone here and still hit the Federation base on Phelosia before they’ve even woken up.” 

“But _no_ time to teach the artistic rebels how to use a firearm,” Avon countered. 

“That’s not a problem,” Grant said. “I’ve been training them on the weapons I brought with me.” 

“Now, that is convenient,” Avon said, but he was looking at Blake again, rather than Grant. “But no more convenient than our current location because, without us, this plan would never succeed.” He narrowed his eyes. “Nobody with Grant’s experience would rely on luck. You wouldn’t, would you, Blake?”

“This has nothing to do with me,” Blake said levelly. 

_“Really.”_

“You’re right,” Grant said. “Relying on luck would be a pretty silly thing to do. And I didn’t. I need people and weapons, but I don’t need them from you. If you turn me down, I have other people I can ask. You were just the closest.” 

“But each day makes it more likely that the Federation will catch up with you,” Avon said, without looking away from Blake. 

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Grant asked. 

“Very well, since you asked so politely,” Avon said. He swung back to look at the screen again and smiled. “We’ll help you.”

Grant grinned. “That’s-”

“On one condition,” Avon said, holding up a hand to delay his gratitude. “Fifty per cent of your fee. And in Federation credits, not in elaborate swords. Do we have a deal?”

“Be reasonable, Avon. Fifty per cent barely covers my expenses.”

“Four of us, one of you. Eighty would be reasonable, and I’m only asking fifty. Fifty per cent of your increased fee, mind, not the one they originally offered you. What is it, five million credits?”

“Six,” Blake said. “Apparently.” Avon looked back at him, and Blake smiled pleasantly. 

“I’ve been here a month,” Grant protested. 

“Fifty,” Avon said, “or I turn this ship around right now.”

“All right. Get here quickly, then,” Grant said with bad grace. “Cally’s got the teleport coordinates.” 

“Zen,” Avon said as the transmission faded, “set a course to the planet Phelosia.” He swung on his heel as Zen chimed confirmation, feeling the floor squeak under his bare feet. “Cally, continue to monitor all transmissions coming in or out of the planet. Blake, wake the others, then help Dayna gift-wrap her weapons for Grant. I’m going to change.”

“You haven’t taken up Buddhism then?” Blake asked. 

Avon considered answering that, but decided it wasn’t worth it. He heard Blake and Cally’s laughter follow him out. 

*

Avon had chosen black leather for the journey down to Phelosia, completing the outfit with a short studded jacket he’d found in the wardrobe room and a pair of studded leather gloves he’d stolen from one of Bayban’s men. It was a good outfit for scrambling around in the dark and scaring the hell out of people, but it was, unfortunately, somewhat overdramatic for sitting behind the teleport and brooding. 

The reason Avon was inappropriately dressed was, of course, _Blake._

The Liberator’s crew had gathered in teleport room an hour after Avon had talked to Grant. Avon had assigned teleport-watching duty to Vila, and Blake had pointed out that Vila, who was snoozing against a wall, would be needed to get at least one prong of Grant’s attack force into the base. Avon had conceded the point and had ordered Tarrant to stay behind instead. Blake had said no, because Tarrant’s ability to pretend to be a Federation officer would also be vital to their infiltration of the base. Avon had said fine, Cally would stay then, and Cally had said that she thought her empathy with another essentially peace-loving race would be invaluable, as would her experience of leading guerrilla attacks on Federation bases. So, Avon had sighed and turned to Dayna, and Blake had said, 

“Dayna needs to supervise the distribution and operation of the weapons. In fact, there’s only really one person whose skills and experience aren’t vital to this mission. Isn’t that right, Avon?”

And Avon had agreed to stay behind, rather than get into a fight about what Blake’s skills actually were. 

At the time he’d thought that handing Blake a forum to talk about what an inspiring leader he was would be a bad idea. Having had several hours to think about it, he was now of the opinion that giving Blake an opportunity to prove it in person down on the planet had been an even worse idea, but it was too late to do anything about that. The problem with Blake was that he was an inspiring leader. Or rather that was one of the many problems with Blake, the others including such superlative character traits as his refusal to listen to good advice, his almost suicidal bravery, and how distractingly attractive he was when he was being clever, which was unfortunately near enough to all the time to be not really worth the qualifier. Avon had used previous teleport-watching duties to compile a list of all the problems with Blake, and he returned to it now, adding twenty-five new entries before Vila called in.

_“Avon, teleport now!”_

Rather than wait to ask whether this instruction referred to everyone or just to Vila, Avon pulled them all up. It was easier to answer questions if you were alive. 

The air in the teleport bay shimmered and Blake snarled, _“Put me back right-”_

Before he could finish, Avon pushed the lever that would return him to his previous location. Unlike some members of the crew, he always kept careful track of the coordinators of those who were planet-side, in case of emergencies. 

“Me, too,” Tarrant said. Cally nodded as well as she checked her gun, and Avon set them back down on the planet where they’d been. 

He turned to Vila and Dayna who seemed to be covered in a thick grey dust. “What about you two?”

“No, thanks,” Dayna said with a snort. “The tunnel we were in was about to collapse. My team will have been blocked off.”

“In that case, you can operate the teleport,” Avon said, getting to his feet. “Put me down a few meters away from Blake’s current location.” He pulled a bracelet from the rack and snapped it closed over his glove. “And be ready to bring me up _quickly._ In other words, don’t fall asleep.” Vila chose to ignore this, so Avon glared at him. _“Vila.”_

“I wasn’t going to,” Vila protested. 

“Keep it that way.” Avon pulled his gun out of its holster. “All right, Dayna. Teleport now.” 

In anticipation of appearing in a tunnel like the one Dayna had described, he closed his eyes, hoping they would have enough time to adjust to the low levels of light in the transfer. The shimmering sound of the teleport reached its crescendo and Avon dropped to a crouch. He opened his eyes and found he was indeed in a wide and poorly lit tunnel.

“Get down!” Blake yelled to the rebels behind him, and there was an explosion that Dayna could be proud of later, if they got out of this alive. Debris flew everywhere. Avon ducked into an alcove while the walls shook. 

When the ringing in his ears faded, he peered out around the wall. Blake was out in the open, gesturing back to the men and women with him. In his other hand he held the jewelled sword that Grant had shown them earlier. The weapon was ludicrous on its own, but it suited Blake, turning him from a desperate and fallible man into the First Calendar hero whose clothes he wore. Avon felt a rush of uncomplicated arousal and pushed it away with a snarl, swinging round to scan the rest of the area. 

There was dust hanging in the dim air, so Blake probably couldn’t see the fallen trooper aiming a gun weakly in his direction. Avon extended his gun arm and shot the man before he could fire and kill Blake. Then, with barely a pause to savour Blake’s look of brief confusion, he swung back to make sure the way Blake and the others had come was still clear and back towards him. 

“This way,” Blake said, nodding in the direction the explosion had come from. Avon rolled his eyes and strode after him into the base’s central control room. They were apparently the first ones there, but as the Federation captain tried to make a break for it through the main doors he ran into Tarrant’s party. A few moments later Cally and her Phelosians broke in through the secret door behind the main computer terminal and Grant pushed his way past Tarrant. Avon was reluctantly impressed – the attack had been coordinated perfectly. 

“Surrender,” Blake said as the captain turned back into the room. He held the sword out until it touched the captain’s jacket. The pommel sparkled in the institutional lighting.

 _“Now,”_ Avon added, covering the other troopers in the room with his gun as the rest of the Phelosian rebels filtered in. 

“Or we’ll kill you,” Blake said. 

“Slowly,” Avon finished. 

*

“So, you just swan in after the fighting’s done and take all the credit?” Tarrant groused as the Federation officers were led away by some of the Phelosians. He was bleeding slightly from his lower lip. Cally, who had taken phaser fire to the shoulder, had already been teleported back up to the Liberator for treatment. 

“That’s right,” Avon agreed, finishing work on the counter signal he’d sent out to block the distress call that the captain had apparently sent ten minutes before they arrived. Delaying the news of their successful coup wouldn’t convince anyone for long – there were undoubtedly standard news reports that wouldn’t be sent, and their absence would alert the Federation to a potential problem – but it would give Grant a few more hours or days to establish a new power structure here, and that could easily be vital. 

“And now,” Avon said, “I’m going back up to the Liberator while you and Blake finish containing the situation here. The perks, Tarrant, of leadership.” He thumbed his communicator. “Dayna?”

“Yes, Avon.”

The elderly Phelosian leader gripped his bracelet arm. “Thank you for everything you’ve done,” he said, his eyes shining with sincerity. 

Avon saw Blake watching the exchange from over by Grant, and gave the Phelosian a wide smile as he removed the hand. “It was nothing.” 

“For some of us more than others,” Tarrant said, dabbing at his lip. 

“Tell Grant he can deliver our fee whenever he wants,” Avon told him. “Within the next twenty-four hours. All right, Dayna. Bring me up.”

He tried to feel pleased with the way the operation had gone and the way he had contained the Blake situation, but it was unexpectedly unsatisfying. Ultimately, Avon knew, he would have preferred to have been there throughout, if they were going to go at all. Sending others to do his dirty work had never been one of his particular vices. 

He visited Cally and congratulated her tacitly on what Dayna had intimated had been some good work coordinating the Phelosians, and then went to shower off the dust. 

On his way back to the flight deck, now dressed in black panelled suede, he passed Tarrant carrying a large briefcase.

“Three million Federation credits,” Tarrant told him, hefting the briefcase up to eye level. “Courtesy of Del Grant and the Phelosians.”

Avon smiled. “My, they were grateful, weren’t they?” 

“Grant’s in the teleport bay now.”

Avon considered this. “With Blake?”

“That’s right,” Tarrant said, and Avon nodded and waved him on his way. He heard the sound of the two men talking well before he was in sight of the doorway and slowed down, hoping to catch Blake confessing to having called Grant, rather than the other way around. Cally would undoubtedly claim he’d been right to do so, but even she would be distressed at the idea that Blake was keeping things from them again. It wouldn’t discredit him completely, but it would take the shine off. 

“Right. Well, I should be off,” Grant’s voice said. “Thanks for all your help.”

“Mm,” Blake said. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Thanks. I will.” There was a pause and then Grant said, “Last time we met, you asked me if I wanted to stay.”

“Well, the offer’s still open,” Blake said, and Avon scowled – the last thing he needed was Del Grant stomping about the place, barely forgiving him for Anna’s death and siding with Blake wherever possible. “We could use you, I won’t deny it.”

“No,” Grant said, and Avon was briefly relieved until he said, “This time I thought you might like to come with me. The others are welcome, too, of course. I thought Cally-?”

“No,” Blake said. “I can’t speak for Cally, but I’ll stay.”

“All right. I won’t ask why-”

“That’s very civilised of you.”

“But I will tell you what I told my sister,” Grant said. “You could do better.” Blake laughed and Grant said, “I mean it in more ways than one. There are plenty of other worlds still under the Federation’s yoke. You know how much good you could do out there.”

“As it happens, I said the same thing to Avon just before you called in.”

“And what did he say to that?” Grant asked. When Blake didn’t answer, he snorted in derision. _“Leave him,_ Blake”

“I can’t,” Blake said ruefully. There was a pause in which Grant sighed, and then Blake chuckled, presumably to take the edge off things. “If nothing else, he’s got my ship.”

“ _Whose_ ship, was that, Blake?” Avon asked, descending the steps from the corridor at last. 

If he’d thought it might discomfort Blake to learn that at least some of his conversation had been overheard, he was doomed to be disappointed. Blake ducked his head, but it was to grin, rather than in embarrassment. With a wave to Grant, he left the teleport bay. Probably to put the final touches on his mutiny plan. 

Avon watched him go and took a seat behind the teleport desk. He glanced up at Grant. “Next time the fee will be sixty per cent.”

Grant nodded. “Understood.” He stepped into the teleport. “Thanks,” he said reluctantly. “For agreeing to help.”

“Yes,” Avon said. “Well. It was the least I could do.”

“That’s right. It was,” Grant agreed, and Avon glowered at him as he dematerialised. 

*

The conversation he’d overheard in the teleport bay continued to nag at Avon throughout the day. Which was ridiculous, because essentially nothing had changed. Yes, Grant had, to all intents and purposes, accused Blake of being personally – perhaps romantically – invested in Avon, and no, Blake had not denied it. But Avon hadn’t exactly been unaware that this was a possibility. If Blake had no sexual interest in him, he would probably have pulled away on any one of the many times Avon had been forced to grab him. He would also not have refused to teleport back up to the Liberator while Avon and Grant finished disarming the bomb on Albion. Vila had complained about the incident later at length, and although Avon (still emotionally fraught after reliving what had happened to Anna) had not been in a position to appreciate this information at the time, he had remembered it. Loyalty be damned, Blake’s stubborn refusal to save himself (and, and perhaps more importantly, another member of his crew) spoke directly of the kind of sentiment that made Avon himself act irrationally whenever Blake was in danger. 

Of course, neither he nor Blake had ever made a direct move on the other. Blake, presumably, had Byzantine reasons of his own – Avon had never asked. Whatever they were, Avon’s reason was simpler. He liked Blake very much on occasion, and desired him more than was sane or reasonable most of the time, but he didn’t trust him at all. No, he didn’t trust Blake not to hide things, not to make high-handed decisions, or to not use Avon’s feelings against him if it were convenient. And not ever to put the rebellion second. 

As a consequence, the idea of being in any sort of relationship with him had always been an impossible one. And now that Avon was in command and they were reasonably safe there was even more reason not to get romantically involved with Blake. How long would Blake leave it before he began saying things like, _‘if you really loved me, you’d attack that highly fortified Federation outpost’_? Five minutes? Perhaps ten, if he was very distracted. 

No. It was sensible and logical to stay away from him. Still, the wretched overheard conversation with Grant had stirred everything up in Avon’s mind. He caught himself wondering whether the best way to be free of Blake would just be to sleep with him once and hope that got it out of his system. But (as he had in the past) he eventually concluded that this was probably what Vila would call ‘kidding yourself’. 

There was, of course, also the possibility that Blake had staged the whole thing for him to overhear, and if so then doing anything about it would be playing into his hands. Avon had long harboured suspicions about the conversation he had overheard between Blake and Jenna, preparing to go down to Horizon: ‘Avon might run... He plays the percentages.’ After that, Avon had seriously considered running, simply because if that was Blake’s opinion then he deserved to be abandoned. But as disgusted as he was with Blake, he would have been more disgusted to have lived down to Blake's predictions. That had presumably been the point. It didn’t matter that he had never yet been able to abandon Blake if he was in danger – Blake hadn’t given him the chance to prove that hypothesis. Now, once again, he might be trying to make Avon’s decisions for him. And this time he had dragged Anna into it. 

The whole thing made Avon more irritable than usual. He felt like lashing out at someone – if not Blake, which was likely to go wrong, then the people who had taken away his last normal relationship and driven him to this renegade existence. Del Grant’s recent presence and mention of his sister made it seem almost inevitable. 

“Zen,” he announced on the flight deck the next morning, “lay in a course to the planet Earth.”

Vila and Tarrant were the only ones there, but they both reacted gratifyingly. 

Vila’s face fell. “Oh no, he’s got to you at last. Snap out of it, Avon.”

Tarrant stared in disbelief. “ _You_ want to help with the fighting on Earth?”

“What do you take me for, a dead man?” Avon asked.

“Then what are you doing?”

“It’s a personal matter.”

“And what is this _personal_ matter?”

“Personal,” Avon said. “That means it’s none of your business, Tarrant. Have you been failing Orac’s elocution lessons again?”

“Charming,” Vila said. “He wants us to go along with his mad scheme but he won’t tell us what it is.” He pointed at Avon. “I take it back - you haven’t been listening to Blake, you’re turning into him.”

Avon’s eye twitched. He was being played, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a fair point. “All right," he said, giving Vila a hard stare. "You might have heard me talk about a girl called- Anna Grant.”

“No,” Tarrant said, but Vila held up a hand. 

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, I don’t,” Tarrant said, never one to take the hint.

“It was before your time,” Vila explained, “the last time Del Grant was here.” 

“She,” Avon said, “died. It was my fault. They killed her because of me. Orac has found the location of the man who did it.” He paused. “None of the rest of you need to be involved. You can take a holiday for all I care. But I want to meet this man and make sure he’s sorry for what he did.”

Vila and Tarrant exchanged looks. “I suppose I _could_ use a holiday,” Vila said, which Avon knew was his way of saying that he understood now why Avon didn’t want to talk about it.

“Well, that’s decided then,” Avon said. He sat on the sofa because it was there, and he wasn’t sure what else to do. 

It was strange to think that he was on his way to avenge Anna. Even stranger to think that he was on his way to deliberately end someone’s life. Since Jenna had first asked him whether he thought he could kill someone, Avon had killed dozens of people, all of whom had probably deserved it less than Shrinker. But it had always been in self-defence and in the heat of the moment. Now he was meditating on murder – and it made him feel sick.

Eventually Tarrant sat down as well. “Are you going to sit there and brood until we get to Earth?”

“Yes,” Avon agreed. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s rather distracting for me and Vila. Couldn’t you do it in your room?”

Avon scowled at him. “No.”

Tarrant sighed with fake weariness, and rearranged his arms over the back of the sofa. “All right. Would you consider playing a game or something? 

*

They were most of the way to Earth before Cally turned up on the flight deck and very reasonably asked to know where they were going and why. Avon was not surprised that she wasn’t pleased with the answer and, since he had no logical reason to give her for his actions, he fell back on spiteful insults about Aurons failing to empathise with real people.

“That's not true,” Cally protested, and she was seriously upset, Avon could tell. Any moment now she would leave and let him get on with it. “Just because we happen to be neutral doesn't necessarily-”

“Is everything all right, Cally?” Blake asked, wandering onto the flight deck. 

Cally looked at Blake’s expression of concern and crossed back down the deck towards Avon. “Ask him where we’re going,” she suggested to Blake.

Avon turned to look at him, but didn’t answer. 

“Well?” Blake asked.

“To Earth,” Cally supplied. 

“...What?” Blake said, his face creasing with concern, and Avon felt like punching him – or crying. Or kissing him. Or throwing up. Whatever it was, he felt _something_ very strongly as Blake said, _“Earth?_ I thought-” 

“Not for that reason,” Avon told him shortly. He wasn’t sure exactly what Blake thought, but it was probably some variation on Avon dumping him on Earth, or throwing himself foolishly into the battle. 

Blake raised his eyebrows.

“He just wants to kill one man,” Cally said. “An evil man, yes, but, as far as I can tell, he’s not even very important-”

 _“He is to me,”_ Avon snarled, rising to his feet. 

“How?” Blake asked. Avon turned to him, unsure of what the question was, and Blake inclined his head and elaborated: “How do you want to kill him?”

 _“Blake,”_ Cally protested. 

“No, it’s all right,” Blake said, gentling her. “Avon?”

Avon narrowed his eyes. “The man who killed Anna - Shrinker - is one of Central Security’s most highly skilled... persuasion experts.”

Blake nodded. “I’ve heard of him. And?”

“If I get myself captured-”

“And tortured,” Blake supplied.

“-I should eventually reach Shrinker. Once that has happened, one of the others can teleport into wherever I’m being kept and bring both of us back up to the ship. Then... we discuss what it is he’s done.” 

“No,” Blake said. 

“What do you mean, _no?”_

“You’re not going,” Blake said. “It’s as simple as that. Zen, set a course away from Earth.”

“Conf-”

“Zen, disregard that order,” Avon snapped. “Blake, you seem to have forgotten who is in charge of this ship.”

“Have you ever been tortured by the Federation, Avon?” Blake asked. “ _I_ have. _Cally_ has. You do realise you’re only volunteering because you have no _idea_ what it’s like?”

“Orac has researched the matter thoroughly. Shrinker is always called it by the end of the first week if the subject is uncooperative. I can last seven days.”

“Can you?” Blake asked. “Because I lasted six – the first time. The second time it was only three. And perhaps you’re right to think you’re stronger than me, but if you aren’t, and they break you, you will tell them everything you know about all of us. And you will have endangered every single one of us for nothing at all.”

“Not _nothing,”_ Avon told him, each word clipped and staccato. “It is not _nothing,_ Blake, to try and crush evil, to avenge the death of someone you love. You should speak to your friend Del Grant about that, if you have difficulty understanding what that means.”

“I agree that men like Shrinker need to be brought to justice,” Blake told him firmly. “But the only way that can happen is if we bring down the Federation-”

“Well, you would say that.”

 _“Yes, of course I would,”_ Blake said, his voice harsh. “He needs a fair trial, and you need a sense of perspective. I haven’t forgotten who’s in charge here, Avon, but it looks very much as though you have. You have a responsibility to the people you’re leading, to put their needs and safety over your own selfish desires. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.”

Dayna had arrived at some point, Avon realised. They were all there; they had all heard what Blake had said. Avon closed his eyes and breathed and tried to think of something that would counter that, but Blake had played his hand perfectly. If nothing else, Avon was too angry with him to argue properly, which would have been a winning move in and of itself. 

“Zen,” he said, meeting Blake’s glare, “set us back on the random course. Keep away from the planet Earth.” 

“Confirmed. Course laid in.”

“I’m going to my cabin,” Avon muttered and stalked off.

*

He made it back to his cabin without reacting, waited until the door slid shut behind him and kicked his desk chair across the room. It hit the wall and bounced to the floor, coming to an unsatisfying stop about a meter away from where it had started. 

_Oh very good,_ Avon thought to himself. _You feel the need to lash out at something – if not Blake, then the people who ruined your life before he even got there. If not them, the furniture. A very suitable replacement. Another great threat to our civilisation vanquished._

He sank onto his bed, his head in his hands. As his breathing slowed, he began to futilely deconstruct and rebuild the argument until it produced a more favourable result. When Blake had said he was putting the lives of his crew in danger for nothing, Avon could have said something about empty white rooms. And when Blake had tried to take the high ground with all that talk about fair trials for murderers, Avon could have said something about how that was sure to comfort the innocent people who’d died due to the destruction of Star One. 

Not that it mattered. None of the things he had said or could have said mattered, because whatever he could have said, Blake would have been able to counter, because the thing was that Blake was right, whether he practiced what he preached or not, and generally he did. Avon knew that what he’d wanted to do on Earth had been selfish and stupid, bordering on evil, but he had wanted to do it anyway. The others would all have let him get on with it – some more unwillingly than others, but they would all have done it. Why couldn’t Blake have had the decency to be quiet and accept it? No, instead, he’d only had the decency to be _decent_ at the time when Avon was at his worst. It would have been more palatable if he’d been trying to show Avon up, but that was clearly not the case. He was indisputably the better man, as well as the better leader, and he had demonstrated it today in front of everyone without even trying. It made Avon almost sick with anger. 

_Think about Anna,_ he told himself. _This must be about Anna. You must be upset because Blake has stopped you avenging her death._

He reached above his bed for the picture of her. It was an old image – one he’d downloaded from the Federation’s central security database, where she was an insultingly small footnote on his own case. Anna stared coolly out of the frame, her skin pale above a high black collar. 

Avon smiled as he looked at her, although it was a photo that showed very little of what she had been like. Anna had been playful and silly. She had brought him out of himself, teasing until he told her everything, and then, whatever he had decided to do, she had supported him. So unlike Blake. Blake also provoked him, of course, but it seemed to Avon that what Blake discovered within him was the worst part of himself, whereas Anna had always seen the best. As for the idea of Blake ever encouraging him? Well. That was laughable. And made how much Avon wanted Blake’s approval all the more galling. 

Perhaps that was it, he thought. It wasn’t enough just for Blake to be gone or dead, or for Blake to be here, forced to obey his commands instead of the other way around. It certainly wouldn’t be enough just to sleep with him. No, Blake had to stop making him doubt everything he knew or was. Once that had happened, Blake could go away, and Avon might stand a chance of being free. Right now, that seemed more impossible than ever. 

He put the photo of Anna face-down on the bed. The memory of her was still painful, but that pain was far away. The way he felt now – well, that was all about Blake. As he had known it was.

Someone knocked on the door from the other side. 

“If that’s Blake-” Avon began harshly.

“It’s Cally.”

Avon grimaced and considered telling her to go to hell as well. In the end he stood and pressed the door control to let her in. 

“If you’ve come for an apology, you’ll be here for some time,” he told her, walking away back into the room. 

“I can wait,” Cally said. Avon turned back to her and she smiled to show it had been a joke. “I came to tell you we’ve altered course,” she told him, sitting neatly on the end of his bed.

“To?”

“Auron.”

Avon smiled. “Naturally.” It was not enough for Blake to simply to win the argument: he must try for the war as well. Cally’s people had not been approached regarding their non-interference since the Andromedan invasion. They might now be persuaded, and, if not, at least Blake had tried and had shown Cally that not everyone on the ship thought her people were a waste of space. 

“Why do you say that?” Cally asked. 

“I assume it was Blake’s idea.”

“No, not at all. I received a telepathic message from my twin after you’d left the flight deck. My people are dying. I don’t know how or why, but I do know that they are all in terrible danger.” 

“Who isn’t?” Avon asked ironically. He sighed. “But I don’t object to visiting your people, Cally. It seems I have nothing better to do.” He saw that Cally had picked up the photograph of Anna and moved to take it back from her. “A picture of a woman I once knew,” he explained as she looked up at him. 

“Anna.”

“Yes, Anna. And it’s pointless to think about her. I’ll never see her again.”

Cally’s face was infinitely sad. “I’m sorry about what happened on the flight deck, Avon.”

“Why?” Avon said. “You got what you wanted.”

“Yes, but not in the way I wanted,” Cally said. Avon rolled his eyes to indicate this was undoubtedly very difficult for her, and she sighed. “That isn’t what I meant. I was upset – because of what you said about my people. And I do think what you wanted to do was wrong. But just because you’d prefer us all to think you don’t have feelings doesn’t mean that we should dismiss the ones you do tell us about. In fact, we should be _more_ careful of them. Blake and I forgot that today.” 

Avon grimaced. So, it was worse than he’d imagined – they not only thought he was weak, they actually pitied him. “I’m all right,” he told Cally who was on her feet and moving towards him. 

“No, you’re not,” Cally said. She put a hand on his arm – the same one he was using to hold the picture of Anna. “But you will be. Regret is a part of being alive, Avon.” 

Avon gave a wry smile. “That’s not it at all,” he told her.

Cally looked at his quizzically and, just for a moment, Avon thought he might tell her what the problem really was. 

Then there was a loud exuberant knock on the door. Avon detached himself from Cally and strode over the door, crumpling the photograph as he went. The door slid open and Vila stepped back from Avon’s glare.

“Er, Tarrant says we’re approaching Auron.” 

Avon turned back to Cally. “All right, Cally,” he said. “Let’s see how neutral your people really are.” 

He threw the balled photo of Anna back into a corner and strode out of the room.

*

Vila graciously volunteered to be left behind on teleport duty, but since they were supposedly on a mission of mercy rather than a hit-and-run job, there was no reason Blake shouldn’t be the one left on the ship and Avon told him so. Blake... seemed strangely out of sorts and agreed without arguing. He took a seat behind the teleport desk without meeting Avon’s eyes.

“Dayna will bring someone back up immediately for analysis,” Avon told him.

“Fine,” Blake said, making unnecessary tweaks to the teleport controls. “Are you ready?”

“No, wait a moment,” Cally said, stepping out of the teleport bay. “We haven’t got Orac.”

“It would be stupid to compound the risk,” Avon told her.

Cally stared at him. “Risk? They’re dying down there, dying by the thousands.”

“As I’m sure everyone but you has worked out,” Avon said, “this could easily be a trap.” 

Cally looked around at the faces of the rest of the crew, all of whom looked wary and businesslike. “Zelda would never trick me,” she protested.

“No, but Servalan would,” Avon said. “I don’t think poisoning an entire world to get what she wants is beyond her, do you?”

“Orac stays, Cally,” Tarrant said in a strange show of support. 

Dayna passed Cally a bracelet. “Come on,” she said, pressing Cally’s shoulder reassuringly as they joined the others in the teleport bay.

“Good luck,” Blake said and put them down on the planet. 

*

Naturally, it was a trap. The traffic controller who’d been taken up to the Liberator must have informed Blake and Dayna that Servalan was on the planet about the same time as Avon discovered this information because they’d only just been relieved of their weapons and teleport bracelets when Blake’s voice, harsh with worry, began issuing from the bracelet in Servalan’s hand. 

She looked delighted as she raised it to her lips. “Hello Blake. It’s been a long time.”

There was a brief pause. 

“Not nearly long enough,” Blake said and his voice was suddenly calm. “Where are the others?”

Servalan smiled. “Here with me,” she told him. “Surrender the Liberator and they live. Resist and they die.”

Blake’s chuckles echoed tinnily through the bracelet. “I don’t think so, do you?” he said, and Avon sighed. _Thanks for nothing, Blake._ “You may have hostages, but so do I.” 

“Who?” Servalan asked in exasperation.

“Your ship,” Blake said pleasantly. “Our neutron blasters are sighted on it right now. If you kill even one of my friends, I will destroy it and your only way off this planet.” 

“Destroy it and you destroy your friends,” Servalan told him. “They are infected with the disease. And the only cure happens to be on my ship. I think it quite safe to return.” She sashayed over to the door, as though she were a debutant at a party, and although he tried to resist, Avon’s eyes followed her slinky figure out of the room. 

_Blake and Servalan,_ he thought to himself wryly. _Whatever happened to my idea of a normal romance?_

*

After that, things happened very quickly. Rescued by the appearance of Technician Franton, they ran for the replication plant where Servalan’s clones were gestating. Initially, Franton wouldn’t let them into the sterilised area (i.e. the only room with a thick, locked door – the only room in which they might be safe from Servalan) and, since Avon could hardly see and Tarrant could hardly stand, Avon could almost understand what she meant about not wanting them to infect the foetuses. Fortunately, as the sound of Servalan’s ground assault team began thundering through the building, Franton relented. 

The four members of the Liberator crew stumbled into the secure room. The door clamped shut just as the rows of black-suited guards turned the corner, with Servalan at the head of their line. 

Cally hugged her twin and Avon stepped up to the glass plate in the door. He crooked his finger to Servalan, who smiled and glided over to him until they were pressed against each other, with only the door to stop them being in each other's arms. 

“I know what’s in here,” Avon told her in a low voice, pleased enough with the way things were going to flirt with her. 

“Do you?” Servalan said, smiling coyly back at him. 

“Oh yes. So I know you’re going to take all your men back to your ship and not come back until I tell you to.”

“Or?”

“Or I’ll kill your children. It’s as simple as that.”

There were gasps from the two technicians and Cally seized his arm. “Avon, no. That’s monstrous,” but Avon shook her off.

“Do we have a deal?” he asked Servalan.

She seemed to consider this for a moment, and then she smiled. “I’m afraid not. You see, I too have hostages, Avon.” She swung back to her men and indicated that they bring forward– _Blake_ , and the traffic controller who’d earlier been taken up to the Liberator. There were now six bracelets hanging from the Federation trooper’s belt. 

Avon felt everything crumble inside him. Blake must have teleported down immediately after his conversation with Servalan – he hadn’t known where they were going to be, so must have bumbled around on the surface until he’d run into Servalan’s men. Or perhaps the traffic controller had been captured and Blake had been forced to give himself up. It didn’t really matter now. 

Avon himself generally looked bored while captured. In contrast, Blake seemed to have acquired additional reserves of dignity. He stood like a prince in chains, utterly unbroken but still utterly at Servalan’s mercy. His hands were cuffed in front of him, as were the traffic controller’s. He met Avon’s eyes and shook his head minutely. As though that made it any easier or even possible to sacrifice him. 

Avon swung away from the door and found they were all staring at him. 

“My children,” Servalan’s voice said from outside, “ in exchange for Blake.”

“...Avon, you have to do it,” Vila said. 

“I _know,”_ Avon snarled. He turned back to the door. “All right, Servalan. This is what will happen. You will come alone. You will bring Blake and the traffic controller, and all of our teleport bracelets. In return, you will be allowed to remove the capsule containing your offspring.”

“Thank you, Avon,” she said, with a smile. “I knew you could be reasonable. But I will have two unarmed guards and you will all put down your weapons. I refuse to walk into a trap.”

Avon unclipped his gun belt and held it up so Servalan could see it. Then he dropped it. “All right,” he told her. Behind him he could hear the sound of the others disarming and muttering amongst themselves. Avon stalked back into the room where Franton and Zelda were disconnecting the tank containing Servalan’s clones from the surrounding machinery. 

“I don’t like this,” Vila murmured, watching the door nervously.

“No one asked you to,” Avon said, keeping his voice low. “Although, I might point out, that it was you, Vila, who insisted on saving Blake.”

“I didn’t think she’d come in here.”

“It has to be a trap,” Tarrant said. 

“Naturally,” Avon agreed. “So if you’ve got one of Dayna’s guns on you, Tarrant, now is the time _not_ to throw it away.”

Tarrant nodded. There was a knock at the door and they all turned to look at Servalan, who waved through the glass. 

Avon indicated the door with a nod of his head. “Vila, open that.”

“Why me?”

“Just do it.”

One of the guards was first, and then Blake and the traffic controller, Servalan, and finally the last trooper, who was the one carrying the bracelets. Franton handed the tank to the first trooper, who hefted its weight awkwardly. 

Servalan smiled broadly at Avon. “As always - a pleasure doing business with you.” 

“What about the bracelets?”

“I’ve decided I’d rather keep them,” Servalan told him, holding out a hand to take them from her trooper. “A souvenir – to remind me of you once my missiles destroy this building.” 

Avon started towards her, but Servalan laughed and revealed the gun she’d been holding at her side. “No, Avon. Why not accept that you’ve lost?”

“It’s not in my nature,” Avon told her. “And besides, I think that if you shoot me, Tarrant will kill you.”

Tarrant grinned, the gun pointed at her. “We didn’t abide by the rules either.”

Servalan gave an exaggerated sigh. “I suppose I’ll have to be content with killing you all together then. The door locks from the outside as well as the inside, and you have no way out.” She backed towards the door and into Vila, who apologised and scooted out of her way before pressing the door button. Servalan smiled at him as the door swung open. “Thank you, Vila. I always did like you best.”

She left, followed by the troopers. Then the pressurised door swung back into place. The locking mechanism thumped shut and Vila squatted down to peer at the seal with professional interest.

“It’s a good one,” he said. “It’ll take a bit of work. Twenty minutes?”

“But _we_ only have as long as it takes Servalan to get back to her ship,” Blake said, glowering at Avon. 

“It’s five minutes to the main landing-pad,” Franton supplied. “Maybe less.”

Tarrant sighed. “So, now we all die, together,” he said wearily. He threw his gun away. “Wonderful.”

“Not all of us,” Avon told him. He snapped his fingers. “Vila?”

Vila threw him the teleport bracelet he’d taken from Servalan at the door. Avon caught it and closed it around his wrist. “Dayna,” he said into the communicator, “bring me up.” 

The walls of the replication plant shimmered and disappeared around him, and were replaced by those of the teleport bay. 

“Avon, what’s going on?” Dayna asked as Avon ran the short distance to the desk with the bracelets. The movement made his sick brain swim, and he swayed slightly as he pulled another eight bracelets from their holders. _“Avon,”_ Dayna said, getting to her feet. “Are you all right?”

“Later,” Avon told her and returned to the bay. “Put me back down.”

“All right,” Dayna said dubiously, and she pushed the control lever. 

Avon re-materialised about a foot away from Blake, whose hands had apparently been released by Vila and who caught him as Avon almost overbalanced again. Avon looked up at him – saw the concern on his face – and pushed him away and began to distribute bracelets to the others. Gratifyingly, nobody said anything about how they thought he’d run out on them.

“Wait,” Franton said as Avon raised his wrist to call Dayna, “the gene stocks.” These had been packed them away in large boxes earlier, and Avon helped her with one while Blake and Tarrant took the other. 

“Ready?” Avon asked. They all nodded, except Zelda who was distracted by a beeping from one of the machines. 

“I think it's the nutrient flow balance.”

“What are you doing?” Vila asked as she rushed over to the machine in question.

“I have to adjust it.”

“There isn't time for that,” Avon told her. 

“Leave it, Zelda,” Franton pleaded.

“But the foetuses will die.”

“They’re going to die anyway,” Avon pointed out. He raised his wrist to his mouth. “Dayna, get us out of here.”

He saw Zelda remove her bracelet and throw it to the ground. Next to him, Cally shouted her twin’s name and Blake tore off his own bracelet, dropping his end of the gene-stocks box. Tarrant almost dropped the side he was carrying, and then everyone who was still wearing a teleport bracelet was pulled up to the ship. 

They fell out of the bay. “Blake’s still down there,” Avon rasped, pushing the gene stocks towards Franton and advancing on Dayna. “Get him back now.” 

Cally was at his shoulder. “Zelda’s down there, too,” she said, her voice cracking.

Avon thumped the desk with both hands as Dayna fiddled ineffectually with the controls. _“Dayna.”_

“I’m _trying,”_ Dayna protested. “But- no wait, I think I’ve got them.”

Avon turned towards the teleport bay and saw with relief the air shimmer and resolve into Blake sheltering Zelda, as though against the explosion. There was a light covering of soot on the back of Zelda’s white clothes that suggested just how close things had come. Blake’s hands were clasped around her wrists – clearly he had only just managed to jam the bracelet on her. 

“Welcome back,” Avon said dryly, as though he hadn’t just been dizzy at the thought that Blake had killed himself. 

Blake looked up and exhaled in relief. “That was too close,” he said.

*

What had happened on Auron had been almost entirely Blake’s fault for getting captured at the crucial stage of negotiations. This extremely obvious fact should have turned the others against Blake, but of course it didn’t. They were all young or foolish enough to be impressed by reckless heroics, meaning that Blake was now more popular than ever. 

Avon was not. In fact, Cally now refused to so much as be in the same room with him. Dayna explained that this was because Avon had proved just how morally bankrupt he was by threatening Servalan’s unborn children. Avon considered this absurd, given his previous record, but nevertheless made some awkward attempts to apologise. He was not good at apologies generally and, since Cally refused to be the same room as him, it proved practically impossible. 

Although he refused to let the others know he was worried, Avon was not at all sure that she wouldn’t leave with her twin. If that happened it would be- not a disaster, but certainly undesirable. It would make him look bad as the one who had forced her out, but more than that – Cally was the only member of the crew who was never actively insufferable. She was kind, clever and understanding, and she had an astonishing right hook. More than that – he liked her and so did everyone else. To lose her would hurt as much as losing Vila, who was often insufferable, but who was also funny and useful and the only person on board Avon never felt judged by. 

Still, with no other option, he began to resign himself to losing her. 

When the day came, though, Cally hugged Zelda goodbye with the rest of them. 

“I asked her to stay,” Blake murmured next to Avon. Avon glanced up at him and Blake smiled – not a particularly smug smile as they went, but one that made it clear he’d done something Avon wouldn’t have been able to. 

*

As the days passed, Cally relented and started exchanging basic factual statements with Avon again, but generally things got worse rather than better. Tarrant had found some asteroid that boasted rare minerals unlike any found elsewhere in the galaxy. Avon agreed they should go after it, but then Tarrant changed his mind and insisted it would be more interesting to examine an alien probe that had drifted towards them. The others all agreed with Tarrant, except Blake, who also favoured the asteroid. After some negotiation they did indeed visit the asteroid, and somehow it was to Blake’s credit that they did find the highly rare minerals, while it was Avon’s fault that Vila broke his ankle falling down a crevasse.

They followed several rumours about Jenna, which Blake said were all false leads and which turned out indeed to be false leads. On Ultraworld (the greatest computer ever built), Avon (one of the greatest computer experts in the Federation) was captured and knocked unconscious. He heard later that Blake, Dayna and Tarrant had effected some brilliant rescue operation that had involved Tarrant carrying him while Blake and Dayna were forced to perform the beginnings of a human-bonding ritual to distract the Ultras. A trip to the opera turned into a disaster as Servalan was sitting five seats away, the holiday planet Avon had selected for Vila’s birthday turned out to be run using slave labour (Blake put a stop to it), and the less said about what happened on Xanov Four the better.

The only bright spot on the horizon was that Servalan was keeping a remarkably low profile, but it was the only bright spot. Avon tried to comfort himself with the thought that Blake had once been forced to maroon himself on a man-eating planet in order to win back the love of his crew. But when it came down to it, it wasn’t a _very_ comforting thought, since the others had barely hesitated before trying to get him back. In the same situation, would any of Avon’s crew come after him? 

No, not a very comforting thought at all, when it came down to it. And all of it was Blake’s fault – it had to be.

“You’re losing them,” Blake pointed out helpfully as he passed Avon in the corridors one day. 

“And you,” Avon told him, “are a total bastard.” 

Blake laughed and turned back towards him. “That doesn’t mean I’m not right. You’re losing them and, and since you were so clear that this ship is a democratic republic, I’d say that’s likely to be a problem for you.”

Avon was in a foul mood already and Blake’s good mood, which was often something to be enjoyed, was today just another sign as to which of them was losing. “If you want me to admit I should never have taken you back onto this ship, fine, I admit it. That was a mistake.”

“But Avon,” Blake said with wounded innocence, “I’m only doing what you did to me when I was in charge.” 

“True, but I never claimed to trust you. Stupid of me to think you actually meant it and that it might ever inform any of your actions.”

Blake sighed, as though the fact that they were retracing this old ground was very wearying for him. “I _do_ trust you, Avon.”

“An obvious lie, Blake,” Avon told him. “And, at this point, not even an original one.”

 _“I trust you,”_ Blake said firmly, “to do the right thing, just as I always have. I’m sorry if you find that insulting.”

“I find it patronising. That’s not the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No. One implies that I am at fault for being oversensitive, the other that you are the one at fault. And you _are_ at fault, Blake.”

Blake’s face creased in what looked like genuine bemusement. “For expecting the best of you?” 

“For imagining you know what that is,” Avon snapped. “You’re an arrogant fanatic, Blake. What makes you think you know what’s right for the rest of us?”

“Well, for one thing, people like you followed me.”

“There was nowhere else to go,” Avon retorted automatically.

“That’s a lie, Avon,” Blake said quietly as Avon glowered at him, “and at this stage not even a very original one. You could have left at any point you chose, if you wanted to. There were certainly opportunities. But you stayed because you believed in what I was doing. You believed in me, and _I_ think you still do. The least I can do is believe in you in return.”

This was so painfully true that Avon decided to walk away, rather than reply. Anything he said would merely confirm how right Blake was. 

A few meters away, though, he stopped and turned back. Blake already knew he was right, so there was little point in pretending otherwise. It only made Avon look more pathetic to deny it. 

“I didn’t want to,” he said simply. “I – don’t want to.”

Blake smiled ruefully. “I know,” he said, beginning to close the distance between them. “But I’m not sorry, Avon.”

“No, you never are.”

“No, that’s not true, either,” Blake said. “I’m frequently disgusted with myself – I make rash decisions, I endanger people-”

“Good of you to admit it. And while no one else is around, too.” 

“But I don’t regard _you_ as one of my mistakes, Avon,” Blake said firmly. “If anything, quite the reverse.”

He was very close now. Blake always used his physical presence to help persuade and overwhelm. After years in his company, Avon was used to it and a large part of him now expected to surrender. But Blake had already won this argument, so it was probably just habit that had brought him into Avon’s personal space like this. That said, it would, Avon realised, only take a slight movement from either one of them now to turn whatever this was into a kiss. As infuriated as he was with Blake, it was tempting. Perhaps it would shake him out of his complacency. 

He narrowed his eyes and Blake raised an eyebrow. It looked a lot like a dare. So a kiss was not likely to come as a surprise then. 

“Thank you, as always, for your condescension, Blake,” Avon said sarcastically, and turned again towards the flight deck. 

“Out of interest,” Blake called after him, “what is it that you think you do want?”

“I just want to be free,” Avon said, without turning back. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

“Nor do I,” Blake said. “But you do know, Avon, that none of us will be free until we can beat the Federation once and for all.”

It was a tired and well-worn phrase that had almost lost its meaning over the many times Blake had said it, but this time, Avon heard it as an answer to the question he’d asked. If they could beat the Federation then, yes, perhaps free men would be able to think and speak, but, more importantly, if _Avon_ could beat the Federation then Blake would be forced to admit that Avon had done what he couldn’t, that Avon was at least as good as him, and that Avon’s decisions were valid – perhaps more valid even than Blake’s own. It was an interesting thought. 

And with the Federation gone, Blake would be safe, so there would be no need to worry about him. And he’d be so busy on Earth that he certainly wouldn’t want the Liberator, or feel the need to put her crew in danger. Power back with the honest man, perhaps, but more importantly Avon could leave and do whatever he wanted. He would never have to see Blake again, and although that now seemed frightening and upsetting, it would probably feel like nothing but a relief once it was all over. 

He turned back to Blake, his mind ticking over with suggestions. 

“You know that’s not actually a bad idea.” 

Blake snorted and began to say something, presumably about how he did know and had, in fact, been saying the same thing for years, but Avon pushed gently past him towards the direction of his own cabin and Orac. 

“Excuse me...”

*

“As you all know,” he told his assembled crew the next day, “the Federation used to control the administration, transportation links and climates of hundreds of worlds through a supercomputer housed on a secret base known as Star One.” 

“What’s your point, Avon?” Tarrant asked. It was very early in the morning and he was nursing a cup of coffee, but hadn’t drunk enough of it to be even slightly civil yet. 

Avon smiled at him, in a mood to be patronising. “The point is a simple one – I’d have thought even you would be able to grasp it. Without Star One, those planets were effectively helpless and so they remained within the Federation, held hostage by their own weather.”

“Yes, we know,” Vila said. 

“Some of us have even been to Star One,” Cally added.

“Naturally this meant,” Avon continued, dragging the thing out, “that Star One was a prime target for,” he smiled at Blake, who was standing off to the side of the others, listening impassively, “reckless idealists, aliens, and one-eyed maniacs with grudges against the Administration. 

“When Star One fell earlier this year, it was the closest we have ever come to seeing the end of the Federation. Their fleet in tatters. All-out rebellion on Earth.” 

He was warming to his theme now, enjoying the obvious frustration of most of the people watching him. 

“But the reckless idealists had miscalculated. Oh yes, some colony worlds did use the destruction of Federation power as an opportunity for rebellion, but most – _most_ were terrified by climate changes they had no experience of controlling. And all of those terrified worlds – all of them, without exception – turned to the one body still powerful enough to help them survive.”

“The Federation,” Dayna supplied.

Avon smiled, “Yes, the Federation,” and spread his hands, “which kindly swept them back into its pockets.”

Blake’s expression remained impressively neutral. “Presumably,” he observed, “what those worlds needed was an alternative.” 

“Yes. Precisely,” Avon said, pleased that, as always, Blake had caught on so quickly.

“And you think you can provide this?” Cally asked. “This alternative?”

“Yes,” Avon said. “Or rather, no. _Not_ an alternative – the _same_ solution, simply deployed in a more... hm,” he smiled, “diplomatic manner. I have only made a preliminary enquiry, but it seems likely that it would be impossible to replicate the research of the Federation surveyors who constructed the original weather-control programmes and controls within an acceptable time frame. But if we could return to Star One, extract the coding, and release it to the individual planetary climate-control computers – they would, theoretically, be able to operate outside of Federation control.”

“But Star One was destroyed,” Dayna said. “There’s nothing to return to.”

“Orac?” Avon said, laying a hand on the computer’s casing.

“No,” Orac said. “It was not destroyed. A classic example of humans using an imprecise term to complicate what is, in actuality, a most simple matter. The planet is still in orbit: it was only the computer complex that was damaged. During the galactic war, that complex was hit by three alien missiles, and there was further internal damage from the final explosive device that Avon and Cally failed to remove from the building. Consequently, the computer ceased to function as intended.”

“What remains is undoubtedly badly damaged,” Avon said, “but Orac tells me there is at least one man who could repair it. _One_ man who has been called a genius in his own time-”

“Three guesses who,” Vila said.

Tarrant smiled. “Perhaps once I’ve finished throwing up.”

“Avon could do it,” Orac supplied, probably under the impression it was helping them. 

Avon smiled broadly. “Thank you, Orac.”

“With my help, he is approaching an almost acceptable level of skill.”

Vila and Tarrant sniggered, and Avon removed Orac’s key. “I will need help re-building the computer complex, so Dayna and, in lieu of a more competent engineer, Blake will accompany me to Star One.”

“And what about the rest of us?” Tarrant asked. “Are we just supposed to twiddle our thumbs back on the Liberator?”

“The rest of you,” Avon told him, “have a _very_ important to role to play.”

“Oh,” Vila said warily. “Have we?”

“Well,” Avon said sweetly, “the work I’ll be doing on Star One will be useless unless someone contacts the individual planetary governments to tell them what is happening and, if necessary, get them access to their climate computers. I imagine many of those computers will be behind lock and key, which is where Vila will come in-”

“Great,” Vila said, without enthusiasm. “I can’t wait.”

“And, of course,” Avon said, “there is the matter of the money.

“Money? What money?” Vila said, perking up again. 

“Del Grant makes quite a living from revolutionary activity. There is no reason we should not do the same.”

“Avon, I refuse to help you destroy the economy of any world,” Cally said. “Let alone all the many planets in the Federation.”

“Who said anything about destroying an economy?” Avon asked. “Each planet will be charged a standard fee of two million credits. The sum will be negligible to them, but to us-”

“-it’s still negligible,” Vila said. “We won five times that at Freedom Cit- er.” He looked round at Blake, who had indeed noticed his slip, judging by the raised eyebrow. “Eight months ago,” Vila added, rather unconvincingly. “When Blake wasn’t here.”

“Vila,” Tarrant said, leaning over to him, “when last I checked there were ninety-six planets controlled by Star One.” 

“That’s almost two hundred million credits,” Vila said sharply. 

“Minus whatever you have to pay Grant to help you with the more well-defended planets,” Avon said. “And divided into six equal shares. But still, I think, worth having.”

“You’re right it’s worth having,” Vila said. “When do we start?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether the others agree.”

Dayna shrugged. “Well, it’s all right by me.”

“And me,” Tarrant said. “I just have one question.” Avon raised his eyebrows and Tarrant leant forward. “With you off on Star One, who’ll be in charge of the Liberator?”

“Yes, of course,” Avon said with a laugh. “You would want to know that, wouldn’t you?” He paused, smiling at Tarrant’s barely restrained eagerness, and turned to the person sitting next to Tarrant. “Cally.”

 _“What?”_ Tarrant said. 

“Why me?” Cally asked.

“Yes, why her?” Tarrant echoed. “Cally doesn’t even want to be in charge.”

“I fail to see what that has to do with it,” Avon said. “Cally is the most diplomatic, rational and compassionate member of the crew. An obvious choice. Frankly I don’t know why we didn’t appoint her as our leader before.” The corner of Cally’s mouth twitched upwards, and Avon felt oddly pleased to have made her smile. “Cally, your job will be not only to keep these two idiots in line, but also to persuade the local governments to cooperate with us. Do you think you can manage it?”

“I’ll do my best,” she said, and in his head her voice added, _Thank you, Avon._

“Which only leaves,” Avon said, turning to the final member of his crew, _“Blake.”_

Blake was still stony faced, his arms crossed over his chest. He raised an eyebrow again. For a moment, Avon actually took it seriously – and then Blake laughed. 

“It’s all right by me,” he said. 

“Zen,” Avon said, feeling his heart clench, “lay in a course for Star One.”

*

“God, I’m so _bored,”_ Dayna said three months later. They were waiting for Avon’s code to compile and, in Avon’s case, for Blake to admit that he was going to be checkmated in twelve moves. 

“Go and check the door mechanisms, then,” Avon suggested. “They were sticking when I went outside earlier. I’d rather not die here next time one of your experiments goes wrong.”

“I checked the doors two hours ago,” Dayna said, flopping into the chair next to Blake. “They’re fine at the moment – there’s nothing wrong with them, as far as I can see. They just break sometimes.”

“I’ll be done in about fifteen moves,” Blake told her.

 _“Ten,”_ Avon corrected, removing Blake’s second knight from the board.

 _“Fifteen,”_ Blake countered as he moved his bishop. “And then we could play some more cricket, if you’d like, Dayna.”

“It’s almost nightfall,” Dayna said gloomily. “I’ll probably only get to make three runs before we have to come in or freeze to death. I don’t just mean now. There’s _nothing_ for me to do here any more. Everything’s working – about as well as it’s going to, anyway.”

“Tell Tarrant to come and collect you, then,” Avon said. 

“They won’t be here for another week. And even then I won’t exactly be needed. Everything’s going really well, apparently,” Dayna said, sounding disgusted. “Grant’s hardly had to kill anyone. I want to _do_ something, Avon.”

“Well, what do you suggest?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” Dayna said, sitting up with enough enthusiasm that Avon turned away from the game to eye her suspiciously. “I’ve been thinking about the defence grid. The last one was all right, but it was so old and it didn’t exactly hold up once this station was destroyed. I could build something much better in about a week. All I’d need would be the right materials and a ship to launch the satellites from.”

“Neither of which we have,” Avon pointed out.

“Well, no,” Dayna said, sinking back into her chair. “That’s why I haven’t done it yet.”

“But it _is_ a good idea,” Avon said thoughtfully. It was a good idea, but some part of him added that if Dayna were to leave for a bit, this would also be no bad thing. Blake and Dayna had become rather too friendly since Ultraworld – Avon was getting tired of entering rooms to find them collaborating on some piece of equipment together, or laughing over the same viscast. Not to mention all the outdoor sports. 

He turned back to his opponent. _“Blake.”_

Blake looked up. “This is nothing to do with me,” he said as though on instinct, and Avon narrowed his eyes.

“I didn’t think it was. Should I?”

“I don’t know,” Blake said. “Your move, I think.”

Avon glanced down at the board, saw things were proceeding as he’d expected, and moved his remaining bishop. He looked back up at Blake. “Contact Jenna. She must have a ship by now that Dayna could use.” 

“Er, Avon, I don’t-” Blake began. 

“-know where Jenna is?” Avon finished for him. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure” Blake said, trying for righteous anger and failing. He moved one of his castles with a definitive thump and then grimaced as Avon knocked it off the board with his bishop. “Ah- That’s... _not_ what I meant to do.” It was, in fact, an even worse move than the one Avon had assumed he would make. He was obviously rattled, and Dayna turned on him. 

“Why didn’t you tell us?” she demanded, and then she looked back at Avon. “And you’ve known, too.”

“Not for long,” Avon said. “And I didn’t know absolutely until just now. But I would hazard a guess that _Blake_ has known for the last two months.” He looked at Blake, who was contemplating which of his pieces to throw away next. “The way Del Grant contacted us through the teleport bracelet – that is how you found her, isn’t it? It’s also how you knew she wasn’t on any of the planets I suggested.”

Blake looked adorably sheepish and, seemingly at random, moved another pawn forwards. “She didn’t want to come back, I’m afraid.”

“Not with me in charge?” Avon asked. Blake inclined his head to one side, and Avon rolled his eyes. “Good of you to tell me. _Check,”_ he said, swapping Blake’s pawn for his queen. “And that’s mate in-” He stopped as he saw what Blake had done. He flicked his eyes upwards in time to see Blake start chuckling as he removed Avon’s queen in favour of his bishop.

“I think you’ll find it’s stalemate in five,” he said and got to his feet. “I’ll call Jenna now.”

“That man is evil,” Dayna said as Blake walked over to Orac. 

“Oh yes,” Avon said, smiling. “I know.”

*

Jenna arrived four days later, dressed in a stunning red gown that she presumably found... very practical for life as a smuggler. Avon had chosen black and gold for himself, and Blake, who all this was most assuredly not in aid of, had chosen green again, although it was velvet today – not ideal fabric for a bomb site, but undeniably fetching. 

Jenna was apparently on a tight schedule and didn’t want to stay long. She hugged Blake, and Avon patted Dayna awkwardly on the shoulder, and then they were both gone. 

“I’ve just realised,” Avon said as the ship left orbit, “I could have asked her to bring me a professional engineer.” He looked at Blake, smiled, and turned back towards the underground complex. 

“You have complaints about my work?” Blake asked. 

The truth was that Avon didn’t. Blake was basically competent, but it was amusing to watch Blake be only basically competent at something, particularly at a time when Avon was demonstrating that he was better with computers than practically everyone else in the galaxy. Blake was in a good mood almost all the time now, anyway, and responded well to being teased about something he didn’t feel embarrassed about. It was irresistibly charming.

Avon pressed the door control. As though it was answering Blake’s question, the door stayed where it was, rather than opening as it was supposed to. It was not the same one that had been here when they’d arrived with the intention of destroying Star One almost a year ago. Blake and Dayna had salvaged this door from a crashed Federation vessel and grafted it into the burnt-out wiring of the underground base. It looked dreadful and hardly ever opened properly, but at least it kept out the cold. 

Avon looked pointedly at Blake, who leant forward and thumped the edge of the door panel. Grudgingly, the door slid open. 

Blake indicated the inside of the complex. “After you.”

“You’re very lucky you have other skills,” Avon told him. 

“Violence,” Blake suggested. “For example.”

Avon grinned. “Yes. Just for example.” 

Blake grinned back at him and Avon was suddenly aware for the first time that they were completely alone on this planet now. 

Alone, of course, apart from Orac, who was whirring away busily back in the main programming room. “Ah, there you are,” it said as Avon entered, followed by Blake. “The Liberator has been attempting to make contact with you for the last six minutes.”

Avon sighed. “Is the message urgent?” 

“As they did not share this information with me, I do not know. However, I have been comprehensibly informed as to the nature of Vila’s stomach pains and the precise events that led to his victory in last week’s game of monopoly. I’ve found it most distracting, so if you would prefer not to talk to him at the current time, please inform me so I can terminate the-”

“Just put them on screen three, Orac,” Avon said, indicating the screen in question, which fizzed and then resolved into an image of Del Tarrant’s smiling face. Avon resolutely did not smile back. 

“What happened to Vila?” 

“Gone to get a drink,” Tarrant said. 

Avon grimaced. “All right. What is it?”

“Hello to you, too, Avon.”

_“Tarrant.”_

“It’s nothing urgent,” Tarrant said soothingly. He waved a hand to Blake, who’d nodded a greeting to him from behind Avon. 

“I’m so glad you called.” 

“I just thought you’d be interested to know we’ve made contact with Itrone Minor. We’ll be going there next after Demeter. Grant’s split off and is tackling Soanov on his own.”

“We’re due to release the codes for all three of those planets in the next few days,” Blake said, “so that shouldn’t be a problem.” 

“Right,” Tarrant said. “And, with those three, we’ll be up to twenty-eight planets outside of Federation control.”

“Everything is proceeding to plan,” Avon said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes,” Tarrant said, his smile becoming slightly wider. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Avon. Everything is normal and going according to plan.”

“Then don’t call again until it isn’t,” Avon told him. “Orac, end transmission.” 

He turned away from the screen and found Blake looking at him.

“Twenty-eight planets,” Blake said warmly and wonderingly, gripping Avon’s far shoulder in what was probably not supposed to be an awkward half-hug. “Not bad, Avon.” He grinned. “Not bad at all.”

Avon raised an eyebrow. “Not bad?”

“What do you want me to say? That you’re a genius?”

“Well, a little recognition wouldn’t go amiss.”

“You first,” Blake suggested. 

Avon tried for a glare, but it was difficult to sustain with his mouth trying to smile. “Well now,” he said, “there are times-” and then Blake kissed him, his hand now curling possessively around the back of Avon’s neck. His lips were very soft, Avon noted as he gripped the edge of Blake’s jacket tightly in one hand and breathed in the smell of Blake. 

“This is a bad idea,” he said shakily as Blake pulled back for air. 

“It is one of mine,” Blake murmured. 

“That’s true,” Avon conceded, “but I’ll have difficulty blaming you for this one as well.” And he pulled Blake back into him, opening his lips this time and welcoming Blake’s tongue into his mouth. It probably _was_ a bad idea, all of it, but his nerves were tingling everywhere Blake was pressed against him and the blood rushing through his body made it difficult to think rationally. 

“Incidentally, you _are_ a genius,” Blake told him. 

“Yes, I know,” Avon retorted and pulled him, laughing, back into another kiss. This time, he pushed Blake’s jacket off his shoulders, rather than hold onto it. It was loose and, once Blake could be persuaded to leave Avon’s belt alone briefly, slid easily to the floor. The zip down the front of Blake’s shirt also yielded quickly and Avon wrapped his arms around Blake’s broad back. He pushed one of his hands down the back of Blake’s trousers, using that leverage to pull Blake in closer, by which time Blake had finally managed to get Avon’s belt open. The trouser fastenings were less of a problem and he had his hand around Avon’s cock and Avon was gasping into his mouth and digging his fingers into Blake’s arse when Dayna’s voice drifted in from the hallway. 

“Sorry I’m back so soon, but we’d only just,” Avon turned towards the doorway in time to see her enter the room, “left orbit when- _Oh my god.”_ Dayna averted her eyes and then apparently decided the situation called for an accusing stare instead. “I was only gone twenty minutes!” 

“Ah,” Blake said, trying to arrange his features into something other than complete horror, “Dayna-”

“This has never happened before,” Avon told her firmly. 

_“I don’t care,”_ Dayna protested. “I’m just going to get my plans and leave.” 

“Yes,” Avon said, watching her as she went over to the desk still covered in defence-grid blueprints and began collecting them up. “Good idea.” He twitched as Blake moved his hand slightly and tried not to notice that Blake’s erection was still digging into his hip.

“I _will_ tell the others, though,” Dayna said, grinning as she returned to the door. “Vila will have an absolute field day.”

 _“Dayna!”_ Avon shouted after her, but he was still trapped between Blake’s body and the computer banks. 

Blake himself had begun laughing, his head ducked into his chest and the skin around his eyes creasing into crow’s feet. Avon smiled helplessly at him, experiencing a rush of fondness so strong that made him dizzy. Then he began to laugh, too, resting his forehead against Blake’s. 

“I can’t believe that just happened.”

“They had to find out sooner or later,” Blake pointed out. 

“Mm,” Avon said, absently accepting that there was something worth finding out about. “That was very soon, though.” 

Blake smiled and kissed him again, more slowly this time, and Avon felt the rest of his internal defences crumble. It was suddenly so obvious. He was in love with Blake. That was what it was – the same as he’d felt for Anna, but stronger because it had to eclipse how irritating Blake was. 

It was difficult to know if loving him made everything better or worse, but it certainly made what was happening now all the more important. Blake’s hand was still moving gently on his cock and the warmth inside Avon was building steadily. He pressed himself further into Blake, freeing his hand from Blake’s shirt so he could bury it in Blake’s hair. 

_“Avon,”_ Blake murmured, “I-”

“The Liberator is transmitting another message,” Orac said suddenly.

“Tell them to call back,” Avon snarled. 

“The time I have been instructed that the message is indeed urgent. I would not have passed it on otherwise. Shall I put it on screen thre-?”

 _“No,”_ Blake said at the same time as Avon. “Just... give us both a moment, please, Orac.” He pulled away from Avon and they moved apart to collect themselves separately. 

“Very well,” Orac said. “But I refuse to listen to much more of Vila’s inane prattling. Kindly confine your moment to less than the space of one minute.”

Avon balled his fists and inhaled deeply through his nostrils, willing his arousal to go away. The sound of Orac tutting in the background was actually quite helpful, which was good because the sound of Blake breathing heavily and zipping up his clothing was not. 

“Come on, come on,” Orac said after what was presumably a minute. 

“All right,” Avon snapped, sinking into the chair in front of screen three. “Put them on.” 

He was scowling in preparation and Vila flinched back as his face appeared on the screen. 

“What is it, Vila?”

“...Is this a bad time?” 

“You could say that,” Blake said, exchanging a look with Avon. 

“Just get on with it,” Avon said. “What is so urgent that you have to call now, but _not_ urgent enough for Tarrant to tell me ten minutes ago?”

“I would have told you ten minutes ago,” Vila said, “only Tarrant sent me away.” 

“Interesting,” Avon said. “And why would he do that?”

“Well, he said not to tell you, said it would only upset you.”

“I still think I was right,” Tarrant said from off-screen. “It’s almost certainly a hoax. There’s no reason for Avon to get involved-”

“Tarrant, be quiet,” Cally’s voice said. “Let Vila explain. We agreed.”

“Explain _what?”_ Avon pressed. “Agreed _what? Vila.”_

“You see, we got this message,” Vila said. “For you. And none of us knew what it was at first, that’s why we didn’t tell you. And then there was another message and this time she said her name, and that’s when Tarrant started to get suspicious. Because she’s dead, isn’t she? Of course she is. That’s why you were so angry. But then we got another message just after you talked to Tarrant, with a time limit for you to reply in, and Zen verified the voice-print against the one in your security file and confirmed that it _could_ be genuine-”

“Vila, you have to slow down,” Blake said steadily. “First of all, who is the message from?” 

“It’s from Anna Grant,” Tarrant said, walking into shot behind Vila. He looked grim and resigned. “We’ve got a message from Anna Grant.”

*

It took more than a week for the Liberator to get back to Star One, even at standard by four. Jenna was still closer to Star One than the Liberator was, but Anna’s message was being beamed from the other side of the galaxy and, overall, there was only one ship that stood a chance of reaching the rendezvous at the hour dictated. 

Avon spent the days until it arrived updating the computer systems, so that they could be operated by someone who was not a computer genius (in this case, Blake), and avoiding the only other person on the planet (in this case, Blake). There was a lot of work to do and he slept very little. He wasn’t sure what Blake was doing, but apparently it mostly involved keeping out of his way. 

On the morning of the Liberator’s arrival, Avon returned to the main computer room to find Blake talking to a man with bright red hair. They were looking at the stack of notes Avon had made about the computer systems, Blake poised over the desk like a general in front of a map while the other man stood at his side and nodded encouragingly. 

Avon had hardly seen Blake since they’d had their hands down each other’s trousers, and it was something of a shock to actually be in the same room with him again now. While Avon had been working and Blake had been absent, it had been– if not easy, then at least possible to pretend that he could sort out his feelings for Anna before working out what to do about Blake. In Blake’s presence, all things seemed to warp around Blake, just as they always had. Avon acknowledged that he barely had enough mental capacity left over to wonder what the other man was doing here, but fortunately the part that was thinking about Blake provided some plausible explanations. 

“Ah, Avon,” Blake said, glancing up at him. “This is Deva. Deva – Avon.”

“Yes, I recognise him from the Federation reward notices,” Deva said, looking from Avon to Blake, as though to check it was all right, and then back to Avon again and smiling. “I’m rather a fan actually. I’ve been studying your work on board the Liberator during my transfer here. The detector shield is quite brilliant. I’ve been working on something similar myself-” 

“Yes, I know,” Avon told him. 

“Oh,” Deva said. “You do? But perhaps you’ve run into it. The Federation stole the first prototype – I think Blake mentioned that. Anyway, it’s much improved now, almost completely undetectable to the naked eye, though still nothing like your shield at long range. Perhaps we could talk about combining the two mechanisms at some point.” He smiled encouragingly. Avon continued to stare at him until this stopped. “Well,” Deva said, smiling quickly again like it was a nervous tick, “perhaps some other time.” He looked back at Blake. “Shouldn’t you be going?”

“Yes,” Blake said. 

Avon shifted his stare to Blake, eyebrows raised. 

“Deva’s going to be taking over from us here,” Blake explained. 

Deva frowned. “Yes.”

“As you can see, he’s delighted by the idea.”

“Oh yes,” Deva said grimly. “I can’t imagine anything nicer than being abandoned on a deserted planet to do someone else’s work.”

“Fortunately, he owes me a favour,” Blake said, putting a hand on Deva’s shoulder.

“That’s _un_ fortunately,” Deva corrected, with a faint smile.

“And, of course, he’s _very_ interested in Orac. Aren’t you, Deva?”

“Hm?” Deva said, as though he’d been caught out. “Oh. Well. Yes. But who isn’t?”

Blake grinned to himself and stepped away from Deva towards Avon. He raised his braceleted wrist to his mouth. “Liberator, we’re ready to come up.”

“You didn’t tell me you wouldn’t be staying to look after the systems,” Avon said to him.

“You didn’t ask,” Blake replied. 

The complex on Star One faded away as the teleport activated, and then the walls of the Liberator shimmered into view. 

Avon pulled off his bracelet. “That’s not as good a retort as you seem to think it is.”

“Isn’t it?” Blake asked.

From the teleport desk, Vila said, “Welcome back” with some irony, but Avon ignored him. 

“Nobody asked about your plans to attack Central Control until it was too late. That doesn’t mean we didn’t deserve to know. All it means is that you didn’t give us enough information to suspect you.”

“I thought you always suspected me of something,” Blake said mildly. 

“So far I have always been right to.”

“I’ll be on the flight deck if anyone needs me,” Vila said and slipped out, up the stairs.

“Once again,” Avon said, advancing on Blake, “I would have appreciated being told of your plans before they were happening. I’ve heard of your friend Deva. He should, I agree, be able to continue the work we’ve been doing-”

“Then I don’t see what the problem is,” Blake protested. He was getting angry now, and Avon almost felt sorry for provoking him, but at least some of the reason he felt so tired and anxious and irritable was Blake’s fault for kissing him at the worst possible time and then trying to fix it behind his back, so in a way Blake deserved what he got. “I’ve found you a good replacement.”

“And yet you didn’t see fit to tell me about it. I’ve been working through the night for six days under the impression that you would be the one staying behind.”

“I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

“Yes, you should have told me. And you would have done, if you hadn’t thought I wanted you to stay.” 

“Actually,” Blake said, “I thought you might need me, and just didn’t want to ask.” 

“To trace a message? You were merely an average communications officer, Blake.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“No, I know. You meant you could offer some sort of moral support – an idea I find only slightly more ridiculous than it is insulting.”

“Would you honestly have preferred me to stay and make a mess of the computer relays?”

“Well, now, we’ll never know,” Avon told him. “You didn’t ask.” 

“I’m asking _now,_ Avon,” Blake said as Avon turned on his heel. 

“...Too late,” Avon said, not because he meant it, but because he wanted to hurt Blake enough that he would stay away for a while. He paused briefly at the top of the stairs, already wondering whether this was the right course, and then left the teleport area behind him. 

*

Avon spent most of the transfer time to delta-seven-one-four finding more and more complex and finicky tasks to do in the bowels of the Liberator. While he’d been away, Zen had started to re-wire various parts of the mainframe, like a garden growing weeds in the absence of a careful owner. Normally Avon would have been bored and frustrated by having to re-do his own work, but at the current time it suited him. It suited him even more when Zen began to fight back and he could legitimately lash out at the coiling wires. 

He avoided the flight deck, the recreation rooms, and all meal times. Cally, the most diplomatic, rational and compassionate of the crew and now comfortably in charge of the ship, allowed him to do this without question. Blake was cycled into the watch rota; Avon was not. She seemed also to have convinced the others not to pester him, because when Avon passed Vila and Tarrant in the corridors they smiled awkwardly at him but said nothing. In some ways it was a relief. In others, it was horribly depressing. 

During the third night, Avon wandered absently onto the flight deck, well after almost everyone had gone to bed, and found Blake there, standing watch. He considered leaving as Blake looked up and saw him, but the hum of his presence was such a welcome distraction. 

Avon sat down on the sofa, without speaking. Eventually Blake sat down opposite him and began setting up the chessboard. As usual, he made the first move, and then sat back to see what would happen. 

They played the game in silence. Blake won, but they both agreed without saying anything that Avon was emotionally compromised and, in other circumstances, would have done better. Avon stood to go. 

“Are we going to talk about this?” Blake asked.

“Later,” Avon said, glancing back at him. “Perhaps.”

“All right then, later,” Blake agreed. “But we will talk, Avon.”

Avon paused, and nodded, and went to restructure the illumination circuits. This time Zen electrocuted him almost immediately.

Three more nights passed. Blake did not ask again, though he was not very good at hiding the fact that he wanted to. It was not exactly comfortable to sit with him in silence, but it was more comfortable than not sitting with him. Avon won every game.

On the seventh morning, Avon was woken by a call from Cally on the bridge. Apparently the Liberator was approaching a cloud of energy-charged fluid particles. Although it could find no conclusive proof that they were harmful, Zen’s suggestion was that they deviate to avoid contact. However, this deviation would mean they would be late for the rendezvous. 

Cally’s opinion was that they should follow Zen’s advice, but the fact that she was calling suggested that she was giving Avon the opportunity to object, if he wanted to. Anna’s messages had not been specific about what penalty might be enacted if they were late, or even if there was one. Avon was naturally inclined to fear the worst, but he could almost hear Blake lurking over Cally’s shoulder, ready to remind him of his responsibility to put those under his command before his selfish desires, and deferred gracefully. 

*

Eventually they reached their destination. Avon was in the teleport area first, ready with his gun and teleport bracelet. He set the coordinates himself, so there would be no mistakes, and went to stand in the teleport bay. The others came in _en masse_ as though they had been discussing him together behind his back. 

Avon gestured to the desk with his gun. “Put me down at those coordinates. I don't know what to expect or how long this will take me. I'll call in every hour on the hour, but if I miss one transmission, get out of here.”

“You’re not going down alone?” Vila asked as he took his place behind the desk. 

“That’s right.”

“Avon, you’re _not_ going down alone,” Blake said, pulling a bracelet from the holders. 

“I don’t need you to make my decisions for me, Blake.”

“And we don’t need you to make ours,” Cally said. She took the bracelet Blake handed her and snapped it over her wrist. “Blake, Tarrant, and I will be coming with you of our own free will.”

“Then you’ll be walking into the same trap as me,” Avon pointed out. 

“Probably,” Tarrant said, “but that didn’t stop us from going to Auron.”

“That expedition was not, as I recall, a great success.”

“Surely that depends on how you define success,” Cally said. “Without our intervention, my people would have been completely destroyed. Instead, Zelda and the gene stocks survived.”

“Look,” Tarrant said, “we've been through a lot together. We've always been at risk. We've always taken chances. But we've survived because we worked as a team. There’s no reason for this to be any different.”

“This happens to be my problem. None of you are involved.”

 _“Avon,”_ Blake said, stepping into the teleport bay with him, “we are involved. Accept it.”

“So what Dayna said was true, then?” Vila said innocently from the desk. 

“Yes,” Blake said levelly. “If what Dayna told you was how well we all worked as a team.”

“It wasn’t.”

Avon glowered. “Just operate the teleport, Vila. Leave speculation to those with enough brain cells to speculate with.”

Vila sighed and reached for the teleport lever. “Rather you than me, Blake,” he said, and grinned at Avon as they vanished.

*

Whoever it was who had Anna had left a guidance system to lead them to the place where she was being held. It answered to Avon’s name and voice-print and began directing them across the ground. After a while, Avon grew annoyed with its peevish commands and tried to give it to Tarrant instead, but the sphere was having none of it, and refused to go any further unless Avon was holding it again. Cally and Blake seemed to find this incredibly funny, and Avon would have snapped at them for being childish, but in truth it was a relief to have them here, cutting the tension. After a while, he also noticed dark shapes moving in the undergrowth. With one hand holding the sphere and his mind occupied, attacking him would have been comparatively easy were it not for the three alert, watchful people walking beside him. It would have been stupid to have helped bring down the Federation, to have survived Blake’s cause, and travelled half-way across the galaxy to rescue Anna, only to be killed on the planet’s surface before he could reach her. In the privacy of his own mind, Avon was willing to admit he was grateful for the company, no matter how awkward it would be to have Blake with him when or rather – he forced himself to think – _if_ they found Anna.

The guidance sphere led them to what looked like the entrance to an underground base. With a deep hum, the entire top panel flipped over to expose a tunnel going deep underground. 

Tarrant peered down into its depths and grimaced. “What a charming summer home. Who wants to go first?” 

“I’ll do it,” Blake said, pausing as Avon put a hand on his arm. It was the first time they’d touched since Star One and Blake looked at him steadily, as though to check it meant nothing. 

“I’ll go first,” Avon told him quietly. 

Blake nodded, “All right,” and Avon holstered his gun and climbed up to the top of the ladder. The light was very poor, but it was still possible to see how grimy everything was. Avon grimaced and began his descent. He was not claustrophobic, something he’d been glad of before, but no more so than now – stuck in a narrow black and silver tunnel with Blake’s large boots only a few yards above his head. 

At the bottom of the ladder, he pulled his gun from its holster again and pointed it into the shadows at both ends of the corridors. When no obvious enemies appeared, he raised his bracelet to his mouth to check it was still working. “Vila, come in Vila.”

“Avon? It’s been less than an hour,” Vila’s voice said. “Are you all right? Do you want me to bring you up?”

“Possibly. And not yet, in that order,” Avon said as Blake dismounted the ladder and stepped to one side, so that Tarrant and then Cally could join them. “Keep a lock on our signal, though. I get the feeling that when we want to leave we’ll want to do it quickly.”

“All right,” Vila said. “Standing by.”

“So at least we have a way out,” Blake said, with a pointed look at Avon. He, too, had looked up at the shaft they’d climbed down and had seen that the hatch at the top had closed automatically, trapping them inside. 

“So, what now, Avon?” Tarrant asked, and Avon realised the others were looking at him as well. All four of them had pretensions to command now (some more valid than others), but the facts of this particular misadventure meant that they all felt the need to defer to him. He bared his teeth in a smile, aware that at another time he would have enjoyed this. 

“You two,” he told Cally and Tarrant, “that way. Blake, you’re with me. We meet here in twenty minutes whatever happens. Understood?”

“Understood,” Cally said, and she and Tarrant disappeared off down the other end of the corridor. Avon jerked his head down the other corridor, and Blake nodded and followed him in that direction.

“I’m flattered you chose me,” Blake said as they rounded the corner. 

“I wouldn’t be,” Avon told him. “The other choice was Tarrant.”

“Tarrant or Cally.”

“You make a better human shield,” Avon said, rather than tell Blake that the idea of sending him away was more upsetting than the idea of Anna seeing the two of them together and getting the right idea. It was a thought he didn’t want to examine too closely. Saying it would make it real, and Avon didn’t think he could bear that quite yet. 

They were at the first room now – a well-lit square with two large, blocky, white consoles, and a wooden table covered with equipment and a set of abandoned clothing. There were strange, transparent bodycasts on the wall. Blake moved to inspect the console and Avon walked past him to the table. Slowly he picked up the tunic draped over it. 

It was the standard tabard of the Alpha-grade dome-dweller in red. There must be thousands of them in circulation, but Avon knew as soon as he picked up it that it was what he’d thought it was. Anna’s grandmother’s brooch was still pinned to the collar, just as it had been on the day Avon had gone to pick up the visas from a man he didn’t trust. 

On instinct he raised the tabard to his face and breathed in the smell of Anna. Was that possible? Perhaps he was simply imagining that a five-year-old tunic retained her scent. 

He turned back into the room and found Blake watching him. Someone else would have been embarrassed to be caught, or awkward about the implications of what was happening, but Blake’s face wore nothing but steady interest. It made Avon’s heart ache. 

“It’s... Anna’s,” he explained.

“I know,” Blake said and nodded towards the screen. “That’s her, isn’t it?”

Avon turned. The screen opposite Blake was showing a black and white photograph of Anna laughing. She looked beautiful: her hair curled and her eyes dancing. That was how he remembered her. He even remembered the party the picture had been taken at. It had been her brother’s twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth birthday. A few weeks before she’d been taken. 

“Yes,” Avon said hoarsely.

“The computers say she’s been held for questioning within this complex,” Blake said, crossing over to him. “It doesn’t say where exactly, but there’s only one level, so we should be able to find her fairly quickly.” He indicated the door. “Shall we?” 

“Yes,” Avon said, pushing his emotions back down. He dropped the tabard back on the table and strode out of the room. “Stay behind me.”

“I won’t be much good as a human shield from back there.”

“You weren’t much good to begin with,” Avon said. He ducked round another corner and was immediately met with gunfire. Blake pulled him back roughly, and Avon collided with his chest and swung around behind him. 

“So we know there’s something interesting down there,” he murmured, pressing himself against the wall next to Blake. Gradually the gunfire petered out. “Something they don’t want us to see.” 

“I agree. So assuming we don’t retrace our steps-”

“Do we assume that?”

“You said it yourself, Avon: there’s something worth seeing down there.”

“The complex could be circular, we could get to that area another way, but, all right, assuming we don’t retrace our steps, I can see only one available option-”

“You don’t think it’s worth asking Vila to put us down past the guards.”

“I didn’t get a good look at the corridor layout before you pulled me back. I would estimate that there’s a stretch of corridor – perhaps about four metres or so – behind the guards and what looks like another corridor branching off to the left about five metres on from this one, but I wouldn’t want to risk my life on it. Not without precise measurements.”

“One option then,” Blake said. “Unless you want to go back. Or back up to the Liberator.”

Avon made a face. “Do you think those guards will have come to investigate what happened to me yet?”

“There’s one way to find out,” Blake suggested and they launched themselves around the corner. Avon fired at one of the startled silver-clad guards and drove the ball of his left hand into the nose of one of the others. With his other hand he slammed the man in the stomach, pushing past him as he fell. Behind him, Blake had taken out another two men and was now running after him. 

The corridor they were aiming for was only slighter further away than he’d estimated. Avon sprinted through the doorway arch and turned on his heel to cover Blake – which meant he was in time to see the door slide shut between them. 

There was no obvious door control on this side. Avon pressed himself against the door, trying to push it back into its earlier position, but it was clearly a futile exercise. If the door was thick enough to block out all sounds from the other side of the corridor, it was thick enough to be practically impossible to move alone. Perhaps Gan could have done it, but Gan was, obviously, not here. 

He backed away, breathing heavily, and thumbed the communicator button on his teleport bracelet. “Vila, teleport Blake now. _Vila._ Come in, Vila. _Orac.”_

There was no reply through the bracelet. There must be some sort of interference down here, either natural or man-made. So much for their escape route. 

Avon tried once again to move the door by himself, but it was just as hopeless as before. He had a sonal lock pick in his jacket, but as he’d expected, the device was practically useless on anything complicated. This door would need the correct key or someone more talented than Avon to hack into it. Giving up with a growl, he turned on his heel to inspect the corridor he was trapped in. Blake would have to look after himself. He was more than capable. There was no reason to worry about him. 

Putting Blake to one side, Avon crept down the corridor, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. He heard the sound of footsteps and ducked back into an alcove as two guards passed by, possibly back in the direction of the gunfight. When they were gone, he turned back the way he’d been heading in the direction of a large jagged window set into the wall. 

As he approached the window, it became clear that what he was looking into was a large room, with a barred cell set into the back of it. Unlike the corridors, the room was almost unlit – the only light shone down into the cell onto the form of a small woman lying on a bed. Avon’s stomach twisted as he realised who it must be.

Despite its obvious purpose, the external room had no door and there were no guards posted inside. Perhaps they had been the men who’d run past him earlier.

Slowly, Avon walked into the outer room. As he approached the cell, he could see that the woman in it seemed to be sleeping. Her hair was different now and she looked older. Avon had hardly ever seen her without make-up, and this, her unconsciousness and the heavy bars she was trapped behind made her look achingly vulnerable. 

He knelt by the door and opened the cover on the lock. It was a complex electronic mechanism, technically of a higher grade than the lock on the corridor door. Avon grinned and pulled a probe from his jacket. This one he could break in about six minutes. Hopefully that would be fast enough. 

He looked back up at the sleeping woman. “Anna,” he said gently.

At the sound of her name she stirred and turned towards him. Her eyes flickered open and she let out a soft gasp of surprised delight. “Oh – _Avon._ I thought I would never see you again.”

“I’m sorry I’m late, but I did say I would always come back for you.”

“You didn’t once before,” Anna said, smiling to show she forgave him for that. 

“That was different. I didn’t come back because you were dead.”

“Well as you can see, I'm not.”

“...As I can see,” Avon said, though he was suddenly filled with doubt. 

He knew Anna was dead. Del Grant knew she was dead, too. All records listed her as deceased. Naturally records could be falsified, but numerous witnesses had confirmed that Anna _had_ been pulled in by Central Security. She had not been released or her brother would have been notified and the Administration was not in the habit of holding prisoners for longer than it took for them to give up their information or die. He supposed that if Anna had been taken from him today she might have been retained as a hostage, but five years ago he had been a white-collar criminal with an already failed embezzlement scheme. It didn’t make sense that Anna would have been kept alive. Therefore Anna was dead. 

He looked back at the lock he was breaking with ease – and it suddenly seemed too easy.

Tarrant had been right for once. It was a hoax. Anna was dead and the woman he was looking at was... a clone, or an android, or... a projection. Perhaps another woman altered to look like Anna Grant. All the possibilities he’d kept himself from thinking about over the past week suddenly presented themselves to him in a rush. They all seemed so plausible, and so much more plausible than the one option he wanted to believe – that the woman in the cell was _his_ Anna. 

She must have noticed his face clouding over because she began to sit up, although it clearly caused her pain. “You don't seem very pleased about it,” she said anxiously. “Of course, it's been a long time. I suppose there's someone else, is that it? Is there someone else, Avon?”

“No, no, there’s no one else,” Avon said. Anna looked relieved and suddenly he hated himself for lying to her, even if she wasn’t real. “No, that’s not true,” he said. “There is someone else. But that’s not it. That– isn’t what’s wrong.” 

“What then? What's wrong?” She reached out a hand to him through the bars and he moved back without thinking about the lock, which clicked back to its earlier position. “Why won't you touch me?”

“Perhaps,” Avon said wretchedly, “because I can't believe that it's you.” 

Anna smiled and there was some of her old teasing in it. “You never used to be a coward, my love.”

With effort, Avon raised an eyebrow and with further effort he moved forward again and took her hand. It was smooth and cool, tiny within his – so different from Blake’s. She squeezed his fingers gently, just the index and middle finger – just as Anna had used to do, and Avon’s wariness broke. 

“Oh god, Anna,” he breathed, resting his head against the bars, “I’m so sorry."

“It’s all right,” she said, leaning forward to meet him. “Everything’s all right now.”

He laughed hoarsely and incredulously. “Is it? I must have misunderstood the situation.”

“I know you’ll get me out of here, Avon.”

“That is why we’re here.”

“We?” Anna said. “How many of you-?”

She broke off as a siren started wailing in the corridor outside. Anna’s eyes flicked up to the window Avon had initially observed her through. “That's the intruder alarm. They'll be here in a few minutes. They'll find you.”

“I know where to find you,” Avon said, the alarm snapping him back to the reality of the situation. “I'll be back. I will get you out of here, I promise.”

He slipped away, back into the corridors. The alarm masked his footsteps, but it was disorientating and Avon rounded a corner and was almost immediately seized by several guards. One of them hit him on the back of the head and so Avon was staggering slightly when they hauled him in front of Servalan. 

“Avon,” she said warmly from where she was sitting on a raised throne structure. “How very nice to see you again. You look well. No, no, actually that's not true. You look rather tired. Why don't you sit down?”

Avon swayed towards one of the floor-level blocks. “Thank you,” he said wryly. “It's less painful than being knocked down.” 

“Have my people been treating you badly? Oh, I do apologise. I shall reprimand them most severely.” She smiled at the guards, “You may go,” and they left, taking Avon’s gun and teleport bracelet with them. 

Servalan turned her smile back on Avon. “You don't seem surprised to see me.”

“If it was a trap, it had to be yours. The precise planning, the meticulous detail, the general flair – who else could it be?”

Servalan smiled thinly, not as pleased with this assessment as he’d thought she would be. “Thank you. I assume by now that you’ve already seen Anna?”

“Yes. I’ve seen her.”

“So you know what it is I’m offering.”

“Out of the goodness of your heart,” Avon said, smiling. “And what I am offering? Out of the goodness of mine.”

Servalan gestured towards a screen behind her, which was displaying an image of familiar tripod-shaped ship. “That,” she said. “A straight exchange. You get Anna, and I get the Liberator.”

Avon began to laugh. Servalan smiled indulgently, and he shook his head. “No.”

“What do you mean _no?”_ Servalan demanded.

“Exactly that. Neither of us has a heart to give anything from, certainly not out of goodness.”

She shook her head, amused again. “Oh, we both know that’s not true, Avon. Why else would you have come here today? Why else would you have surrendered on Auron?”

“We _also_ both know,” Avon countered harshly, more unsettled than he’d imagined he would be to find she knew about Blake, “that in the exchange you propose only one of us would be offering something real. Anna is dead. She has been for five years.” He wasn’t nearly so sure now, but pretending disbelief was the best way he could think of to get the truth from Servalan. Not perfect, but better than trusting her. 

“I assure you she is very much alive,” Servalan said.

“Then what happened to her five years ago?” 

“She left you,” Servalan told him, fingering her necklace. “It’s as simple as that. You were too dangerous to be around. She knew we were closing in on you, so she ran to her husband, threw herself on his mercy and kept a low profile until everyone had forgotten about her.”

“Not true. Witnesses saw her being taken in for questioning.”

“Did they?” Servalan asked. “Have you spoken to them?”

“How could I have done? But there are records-”

“Forgeries,” Servalan said carelessly as she stepped down from her throne. “Naturally. Anna’s husband was a powerful man. One of my own inner councillors. Even I only discovered what he had done once I became president.” 

“You said _was_ -?”

“He died,” Servalan said. “By an extraordinary coincidence, that sad event occurred only shortly after I discovered that he’d deceived the Administration by hiding his wife. That would have been roughly five months ago. His name was Chesku. She went by the name of Sula. You can check the official records.” She smiled and spread her hands. “My people have been holding her ever since.”

“Keeping her to use as bait again me?”

“Of course.”

“Then why not contact me sooner?” 

“Does it matter?” Servalan asked. “I’ve been busy. As much as it pains me to admit it, Avon, not all of my affairs revolve around you.”

“ _Or,_ ” Avon said, standing and blocking her path, “ _perhaps,_ Servalan, Councillor Chesku’s death reminded you of my relationship with a woman who looked like his wife. You then used the five months that followed to construct an accurate replica of Anna, whether by cloning or electronics, I’m not yet sure. It doesn’t really matter. When it your copy was complete, you began sending messages to the Liberator, hoping to convince me that the impossible had happened and that Anna was still alive.”

Throughout this speech Servalan had been flicking her eyes downwards. “That’s a very elaborate scheme,” she said now with another flick of her eyes. 

Avon frowned and looked down at the heavy necklace she was wearing. It was black, of course, but underneath it- underneath it was what looked like a gleam of blue. 

“I’d... believe anything of you,” he said, raising his eyebrows to show he’d seen the control collar. 

“But not the simple truth that Anna is alive?” Servalan asked. “Because she _is alive,_ ” she said pointedly. “She’s right here in this complex. She could be here in moments.”

“Even if she was,” Avon said as his brain tried to work out the implications of what he was being told, “I wouldn’t give you the Liberator. So it doesn’t make much of a difference, does it?”

“She’s that unimportant to you now? I’m afraid that _will_ disappoint her.” 

“My decision has nothing to do with Anna.”

“Really? Why don’t we test that theory?” Servalan suggested. “What about some of your more recent colleagues?” she said as Tarrant and Cally were led in between two helmeted guards. Both had their visors down. “Are their lives important enough to you?” She smiled and waved a gun in their direction. “Give me the Liberator or I shoot Tarrant first and then Cally. And, of course, Blake is here, too. Aren’t you?”

The guard on the left lowered his Federation-issue gun towards Servalan, but she swung hers towards Avon. 

“Stalemate again,” she said pleasantly, pressing the barrel of the gun into Avon’s temple. “Shoot me and I shoot Avon.”

“Go ahead,” Blake said, just as pleasantly and, even with everything else that was going on, Avon rolled his eyes. 

The other ‘guard’ choose this moment to crumple against Tarrant, who grunted in surprise but caught her. 

“It’s all right. I’ve got you.”

“I can’t breathe,” she explained faintly. Tarrant lowered her gently onto the seat Avon had only recently vacated and helped her remove her helmet. 

_“Now,”_ Servalan hissed, and Avon smacked the gun away from his temple and wrestled it away from her. 

_“NO!”_ Servalan shouted in a convincing impression of outrage as he pushed her roughly in Blake’s direction. 

“Keep hold of her,” Avon growled. In three strides he had crossed to Anna, to kneel in front of her. He shoved Servalan’s gun in his belt and reached up for Anna’s face. “Anna, are you all right?” 

She nodded against his palms. “They came to transfer me after you’d left. I suppose they must have realised the cell wasn’t very secure after you almost broke into it. Your friends attacked the convoy-”

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” Avon told her, and kissed her. Anna wrapped her arms around his neck and he used that support to pull her upwards and against him. Her body, even in the bulky uniform, felt familiar and right pressed against him. 

“Avon,” Tarrant said, “this isn’t exactly a good time-”

Avon ignored him. Anna’s kiss was deep and passionate, and he could feel himself responding to it even as he knew that Tarrant and Cally and Servalan were watching, even as- Blake was watching, and even as he slid his hands down her sides and into one of her hip pockets. 

Vila had tried to teach him the pickpocket’s art before, but Avon had never been very good at it. He had neither the patience, nor the grace of movement. Now, he could tell from the way she tensed that Anna felt his fingers close around the object in her pocket, but there was nothing she could do about it, except draw back. 

“Avon-?”

“What is this, Anna?” Avon asked her quietly, holding up the device he’d taken from her. 

“I don’t know,” she said, her eyes wide as she looked from Avon’s hand up to his face. “Avon, I don’t know. It must have belonged to the man who wore this suit.”

“A guard? No, I don’t think so,” Avon said. “Its purpose is far too important to leave it in the possession of a mere guard. Cally, what is this?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, stepping closer. “But it looks Amagon to me.”

“It is Amagon,” Avon agreed. “I thought you might remember it. We encountered something very similar before on the Liberator. Blake remembers, I’m sure.”

“It’s the remote for an control collar,” Blake said. He’d removed his helmet and his expression was grim. 

“More specifically,” Servalan said, “it is the remote for the control collar that I am currently wearing. So, if you’d like to hand it over to me, Avon-”

“I wouldn’t.”

“No, I didn’t think you would. What about the key? Does she have that?”

“You don’t think,” Anna said brokenly. “Avon, you can’t-”

“I don’t _think,”_ Avon said harshly. “I _know._ The facts do not add up. Servalan would not risk her life by planting this device on you, even if you were one of her creatures. Her life is the single commodity she values more highly even than the Liberator. And I can’t see what she would hope to gain by implicating you. Whereas you... if we rescued you, you would be taken back to the Liberator. You,” he realised, “want the Liberator.”

“The _what?”_ Anna asked. 

“Well, of course, she does,” Servalan said, sounding bored. “Oh, and Avon? In case you haven’t worked this out yet, dear Anna was the one who turned you in all those years ago. She was playing you the entire time. And she still is.”

Anna didn’t even answer that accusation. She just stared at him with big, wounded eyes, tears streaming down her face. Avon swallowed and turned away from her. 

“And then,” he said, determined to finish it, “there’s the tunic and the photograph. If the Federation pulled you in five months ago, Anna, what is a five-year-old tunic doing in this complex? If this is a Federation base and the Federation are holding you prisoner, why is there a personal photograph from the same period in their files?”

“I don’t know-”

“It’s there because you put it there. You put it there in a callous attempt to make me act irrationally.”

“How can you say these things?” Anna asked, her hand on his back. “How can you believe this? Avon... I thought you loved me.”

“I did,” he said. “That’s why it nearly worked.”

 _“Avon,”_ Cally and Blake shouted simultaneously, and Avon spun back towards Anna, reaching for the gun at his waist, but it was no longer there. Anna was pointing it at him. 

“So,” he said, with a slight smile, “it _was_ true.”

“Yes,” Anna said, business-like now, the tears still drying around her eyes. “Everything, except for the part about me playing you from the beginning. That you believed that does hurt, Avon, after all I’ve done for you. Don’t you see? I was supposed to turn you in all those years ago, but I let you go.” She sighed. “I would have let you go this time as well. Being rescued by you was only ever a back-up plan. I wanted you to trade me for the Liberator. Once she had the ship, Servalan could tell you she’d reneged on the deal, and then I wouldn’t have had to kill you. You could have taken my ship and left.”

“But now you will kill me.”

“Only if you don’t cooperate.”

“I don’t see a reason why I should.”

“No,” Anna said fondly. “You wouldn’t. But I can give you one.” She swung the gun at Cally, stepping in close behind her. “Give me the Liberator, Avon,” she said flatly, “or I’ll kill your someone else.”

Cally raised her eyebrows, and Avon’s mouth twisted into what was half smile and half wince. 

“ _Wrong_ one,” Servalan said deliberately, and with what seemed like infinite pleasure. 

Anna frowned and, apparently without meaning to, swung her gaze around the room. Cally used this moment of distraction to jab her in the chest with an elbow, and stamped down hard on Anna’s foot. Anna fired the gun, but the shot went harmlessly into the ceiling. Cally turned and broke her collarbone. 

She knelt as Anna fell. Avon stared down at them both and Cally glanced up at him. 

“I’ll take care of her. I brought the tissue regenerator from the ship. I had a feeling we’d need it.”

He nodded and forced himself to look beyond Cally to Anna. “I’m sorry,” he said, without really knowing why, and then, from behind him, there was the sound of a gunshot. Blake grunted in pain. Cally shouted his name and started towards him, and Avon turned, feeling everything in slow motion. 

Blake was slumped back against the wall. His teeth were gritted, his chest heaving, and his left fist was clenched in the fabric over his stomach. There was a large laser burn in the uniform and, judging from the way Blake’s hand trembled, in the flesh below it. Slowly, blood began to seep through his fingers. 

“It’s Blake, isn’t it?” Servalan said, smiling at Avon. “It always has been.” 

She had another gun in her hand, somehow, and it was still pointed at Blake. Having learned from her own performance earlier and Anna’s example, she was more than a meter away from him, although it seemed unlikely that Blake would have been able to fight her off even if she was closer. The Federation gun was still strapped to his arm, but now it dangled limply towards the floor. 

_“Avon,”_ he said, between ragged gasps. “Don’t- give her- _anything.”_

“Save your breath,” Avon told him quietly. 

“So, you will cooperate?” Servalan said. She smiled again. “I had a feeling you might. You’re very predictable, Avon.”

“Am I?”

“Oh yes. You were correct earlier. This _was_ originally my trap. Anna inherited it when she took over Residence One. She thought she would serve as bait, but I was always going to offer you Blake.”

“And now?” Avon asked.

“The same deal,” Servalan said. “You get Blake in exchange for the Liberator. But this time, you can be certain you’re getting the real thing. If you teleport me up to the ship now, I will allow you to remove your medical facilities. That may give you enough time to save him. If you refuse, I’ll shoot him again now. It’s your choice.”

“Then, you don’t want this?” Avon asked, holding up the remote. 

Servalan smiled. “Why would I? It doesn’t work, Avon. Anna and I were in this together. Haven’t you realised that by now?”

“I think you’re bluffing.”

“The moment I see your fingers move towards the button, I will shoot Blake in the head. You will have killed him, Avon, and I don’t think you’ll take the risk.”

“And I... am predictable.”

“Very.”

Avon smiled. “Blake isn’t.” 

Servalan turned in horror in time to see Blake crumple to the floor. She might have screamed defiance as she realised she’d been tricked, but Avon had already pressed the button on the remote and the sound was lost as the control collar exploded.

*

None of them had wanted to move Blake and risk further internal injury during teleportation, so he was resting on the floor of the throne room, his head propped up on Cally’s jacket. Tarrant and Cally had managed to remove most of Servalan’s blood while Avon had been out in the corridor retching, but there were splashes of it still around the walls and caught in the curls of Blake’s hair. 

Avon sat down gingerly on the floor next to him and watched Cally tactfully leave them alone. Then he forced himself to look at Blake.

“How do you feel?” 

“Better,” Blake said. “Servalan was a good shot. Another inch or two to the left and I would have died while you were still talking. I’m lucky she wanted to keep me alive.” 

“Good old Servalan,” Avon said wryly. 

“Yes,” Blake said. “As it is, I should be able to get up in a few hours. Taking it slowly, of course.” 

“Do you know how?”

Blake smiled and then was serious again. “What about you?”

“Do I know how to take it slowly? Not that I'm aware of.”

“How do you feel?”

“Do you want an honest answer?” Avon asked and Blake nodded. “I don’t remember ever feeling worse,” Avon told him. “The week I spent slowly bleeding to death, all the while knowing Anna was being tortured by the Federation, may have been less enjoyable, but given today’s events I’m finding it difficult to view it objectively.”

Blake's expression was incredibly sad. He reached out as Anna had done, and Avon took his offered hand between both of his own, and raised it to his lips. He pressed a kiss into Blake’s knuckles and tried to remember how to breathe. 

“I am glad you’re not dead,” he said hoarsely.

“So am I,” Blake said, with a weak smile, and then he began to laugh and although it wasn’t at all funny Avon smiled, too, against his hand. Gradually, the laugh stopped and Blake pushed himself upright with his other arm. 

“You were supposed to take it easy,” Avon reminded him. 

“Yes. Don’t tell Cally,” Blake said and leaned over to kiss him. He tasted of blood and bile, and Avon kissed him back all the more urgently because he was alive despite everything. Blake was surprisingly yielding this time, letting Avon’s tongue into his mouth and pressing back gently with his own, but he was obviously finding it difficult to breathe. Avon pulled back slowly, sucking on Blake’s bottom lip and then kissing his closed mouth twice more before finally drawing back. 

“I’m... leaving,” he told Blake. 

“Good idea. I should probably rest.”

“No, no. I’m leaving, Blake, for good. Now. Today.”

Blake stared at him in bewildered anger. For a moment, Avon thought he had genuinely rendered Blake speechless and then Blake pulled himself together. _“Why?”_

 _“Why?”_ Avon repeated.

“Yes. _Why,_ Avon?”

 _“Freedom,”_ Avon said, “obviously. A chance at it, if nothing else. That is all I have ever wanted.”

“And that’s _why_ I don’t understand,” Blake protested. “You say you want freedom. Well, today, Avon, for all its personal tragedy, we are closer than we have ever been to that goal. Servalan is dead and we hold Anna, who runs the inner council. _This_ is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for. To reform the Federation from within. If you want to make sure it’s done well, you will need to be there.”

“That’s what you want, is it?”

“That’s what I want for _you.”_

Avon shook his head. “Today I killed a woman for daring to hurt you. Whatever her other crimes, that is the reason she died. If I hadn’t been able to kill her, I might well have given her the Liberator. I’m not sure, but it was certainly a possibility. Exactly the same thing happened on Auron. Once again my feelings for you forced my hand. That is _not_ freedom, Blake. That is the worst kind of tyranny, and it is incredibly dangerous for both of us.” 

Blake scoffed. “Don’t be-”

“Ridiculous? I’m not. Surely you don’t want to be held hostage week after week?” Blake made to protest, but Avon was out of his shadow now. “No, listen to me for once, Blake. It will be your last chance to do so. There is nothing more you can ask of me. Deva can finish restructuring the Federation’s weather-control computers without me. The war is practically won. You are safe. You have Orac, you have Anna, you have Tarrant and Cally and Vila and Dayna and Jenna to help you build your new Empire. You do not need me.”

“I _do,”_ Blake retorted. “I trust your judgement more than any of the others-”

Avon actually laughed. “Really.” 

“Yes. You see the individual while I only see the global. You’re emotional while I’m rational, and yes, all right, the other way round, too, although less often than you think. I _need_ you-”

“No.”

 _“And,”_ Blake said furiously, “I’m in love with you, you stupid bastard.”

“So?” Avon said. “I’m in love with you. That doesn’t change anything. In fact, it was exactly my point. But thank you for proving you weren’t listening.”

 _“Avon,”_ Blake shouted after him as he got to his feet and left without looking back. 

In the corridor outside, he met Cally, presumably returning to check on Blake. 

“Is everything all right?” she asked. Her voice was full of concern, which meant Avon looked at least as bad as he felt. 

“Yes,” he said. “Blake’s sleeping. I... don’t think we should disturb him.”

“That seems sensible,” Cally agreed. “I left a teleport bracelet with him earlier, in case he needed anything, but he should sleep if he can. I assume he’s breathing normally?”

Avon thought of Blake incandescent with rage, and nodded. “Yes. For him, anyway. I’m going out to take some air now.”

“I’ll go with you, if you like.”

“Thank you, I’d prefer to be alone.” 

“Yes, I understand,” she said, pressed his arm between her fingers, and turned back the way she’d come towards the cells where Tarrant was watching the prisoners. Avon made a concentrated effort not to think about anybody Tarrant was guarding, and walked towards the exit in case Cally remembered something she’d forgotten to say and retraced her steps. 

At the base of the ladder, he raised the teleport bracelet he’d retrieved from Blake’s bedside.

“Vila, are you still there?”

“Still here.”

“And still awake. Is this a personal record?” 

“For boredom? No, it isn’t. That opera you took us to is still ahead by five hours.” Avon smiled and Vila said, “Not that I’m complaining – I haven’t spoken to anyone in over an hour, so who’d complain? – but is this a social call, or do you want to come up?”

Avon pushed the bracelet on over his hand. “It’s not a social call.”

“I didn’t think it was. Just you, is it?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Teleporting now,” Vila said, and the air around Avon shimmered and resolved into the walls of Liberator. He stepped out of the teleport bay, pulled the bracelet off his wrist and held it out to Vila. 

“You can put it back yourself,” Vila said, nodding towards the other table. “Go on, the holder’s over there.”

“No need. Rejoice, Vila. Your exile has come to an end,” Avon said. “Cally wants you down on the planet. Take your tool kit.”

“Wonderful,” Vila said wearily. He stood and took the bracelet from Avon, who slid in behind the teleport desk, and began to make the necessary adjustments to put Vila down at the top of the ladder where it was safer, rather than rely on Vila having taken down the coordinates accurately. 

“Any reason?” Vila asked as he packed his things into the carrying case. “Or does she just miss me?” 

Avon looked up from the teleport, thinking quickly. “She didn’t say. Something to do with the storerooms, I think. I’ve taken a look at them, but the sonal locks are beyond me.”

“Sonal?” Vila said thoughtfully. “All right, I’m interested. I haven’t matched wits with a good sonal lock for a while.” 

“I didn’t say they were good. Just that they were beyond me.”

“Now, now, don’t sell yourself short. You’re one of the more gifted amateurs I’ve come across.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should,” Vila said. “I’ve known a lot of amateurs. Most of them are in prison now.”

Avon smiled, not entirely sarcastically, as Vila stepped into the teleport bay. He had briefly considered asking Vila to come along, wherever he was going. If nothing else, it would be useful to have someone to operate the teleport for him. But Vila was irritatingly loyal and would probably insist on going back after a week. And Blake might still need him. And he wasn’t that good at operating the teleport. 

“Right,” Vila said, bracing himself for the worst. “Put me down, then.” 

Avon flicked the preliminary teleport levers, pausing as he reached the last one. “Take care of him,” he said, meeting Vila’s eyes as he pulled the final lever, and he could see by the way Vila’s face fell that he’d worked out what was happening just a moment too late.

*

The first thing Avon did was turn off the comm. circuits. The second thing he did was walk slowly to the empty flight deck. 

Zen’s lights flickered over the wall screen. “Liberator is receiving a message from Roj Blake.” 

“Ignore it,” Avon said. He closed his eyes. They would be fine. Anna had left him a ship and, as he had been in the habit of trusting her, Avon believed her when she said he could have used it to escape from Terminal unharmed. Even if that had been a lie and the ship was booby-trapped, it was likely that Anna would want to disarm anything she'd left there - now that her ship was the only way off Terminal. Blake and the others would be fine. They had medical supplies, and Anna’s ship would be well stocked with food and clothing, even if the Terminal base was not. He did not need to worry about them.

He turned back to Zen. “Plot a course to,” he considered and smiled, “Freedom City. Speed –standard by four.”

“Speed and course confirmed,” Zen said and then lapsed into silence. Almost imperceptibly the ship began to move. 

Avon paced over to his console to check the coordinates and the flight path. Both were correct, which was not unexpected. 

“I’m going to take a shower,” he told Zen unnecessarily. “Let me know if anything out of the ordinary happens.” 

*

Avon stood under the hot water for what felt like hours. Zen did not contact him. Avon turned the shower off. 

_So this is what freedom feels like,_ he thought, water running off him and pooling at his feet like Blake’s blood. 

_It will probably take some getting used to._

*

**One year later...**

Policy meetings were Blake’s least favourite aspect of the new regime. He’d already worked out what he wanted to do months ago, and had spent the weeks in between then and now persuading the rest of the council that that was what they wanted to do, too. Greenway was a lost cause, of course, and Avalon would agree in private and then waste time fighting for slightly better rights for the Northern Domes, but essentially Blake already knew that the rest of the meeting was going to go approximately as he wished it to go. The next few hours were simply a very tedious formality. 

Blake didn’t like things to be tedious. It was a waste of time, for one thing – simply off the top of his head, he could think of five useful tasks he could be doing with the next four hours. Mostly, though, he hated the tedium because the long, slow hours gave him time for his mind to wander onto subjects he usually preferred to avoid: old decisions, the veracity of his memory, Avon...

Unfortunately, he knew it was not only his duty as one of the elected members of the new government to be here, but also fundamentally necessary if he didn’t want the fragile alliances he’d built up to collapse. At least ten of the other councillors would probably change their minds if he wasn’t there to glare at them and remind them what was right. Cally had once suggested that this approach rather limited the process of democracy, but Blake had argued that anyone he persuaded still had a choice. Whatever they chose to do was still their decision - all he was doing was reminding them of facts they already knew. If they then chose to recognise those facts then that was _still_ a democracy, it was just a better-informed one. 

It was the kind of argument and a strategy he had used on board the Liberator whenever anyone - Avon generally - had questioned his authority. As a strategy, it would have been flawed if Avon was as cynical as he claimed he was, but instead it had always worked.

Blake had never doubted it would. He'd seen through Avon almost immediately – Avon might have railed against them giving up the computer room on the London, but he’d gone along with it, though he could certainly have overpowered Jenna. They'd had to do it. There was no other option - people were dying. By the time Avon had aimed a gun at him on the flight deck of the Liberator, Blake had already known he was not the type to kill in cold blood just for a ship. Every day in his company, every day that Avon didn’t leave and instead put his life on the line for people he wasn’t willing to call his friends, suggested that Avon’s worst impulses were fighting a losing battle. And, unwise as it probably was, Blake loved him for it. More than that, he loved the bitter, funny, brilliant man Avon already was – the only one who would consistently both agree with him and still want to argue the specifics, who would disagree with him but still try and save him anyway, who had apparently been so gentle with a girl who’d thought he was a god. He was a better man than he wanted to be, and Blake had wanted so much for him to accept that, stop arguing for a moment, and get on with his life. 

It had been so frustrating to return to the Liberator after months away and find Avon stuck in a rut of petty theft and joy riding, but it had taken almost no effort at all to give him the opportunity to do something better. And it had been so much better. All the free peoples of the New Alliance owed their liberty to Avon’s brilliance. 

In the end, Blake’s part had been relatively minor. He’d patched together a few door-operating circuits and had been shot. Some would have said that without his intervention Avon wouldn’t have done anything, but to them Blake would have said what he said to Cally – it was Avon’s choice. All Blake had done was present him with facts he already knew and let him get on with it. 

Strangely, sometimes he was genuinely pleased that Avon had chosen to leave him in the end. It proved that he’d been right – Avon had been free all the time. They all had. They all _were._

But most of the time he wasn’t pleased. Most of the time he was devastated. 

Blake rubbed his eyes and, with a twist of his wrist, surreptitiously checked his watch. Only twenty minutes until the next official break-point. He’d arrived slightly late on purpose and positioned himself right at the back of the hall, leaving one chair free in the aisle so that he wasn’t quite as conspicuous. That meant there was only one chair between him at the exit. All he needed to do was wait for twenty minutes, and then he could duck out for an hour before anyone grabbed him. 

For the past two months, he and Jenna had been working on plans to implement a system of public transportation both on Earth and between the other planets in the New Alliance. Today Jenna was sky-testing a passenger craft that she was fairly sure the council should invest in. One hour would be enough time for her to put it through its paces while he was watching, and then Blake could spring the idea on the others after the break and see how far he could push the issue during Any Other Business. Those councillors who objected to his ideas usually liked to have facts and figures with which to do so – they tended to flounder if unprepared, particularly in the face of Blake’s conviction. Sarkoff, the council’s elected chair, was becoming increasingly wise to this strategy, but he was also strongly in favour of increased mobility between planets. Blake was, at least, willing to see if he would let this one go.

A latecomer sat down in the previously vacant chair next to the aisle. The reading of new legislation continued. Blake sighed into the fingers of the hand he was leaning on. 

Eventually he became aware that the man next to him was looking at him, rather than at the speaker. Without turning his head, Blake flicked his eyes right and caught sight of the other man’s gloved hand on the arm of his chair. As he breathed in, he caught the scent of leather, metal and familiar cologne, and his heart rate quickened. 

Slowly, he turned... and met Avon’s eyes. 

Avon had changed his hair – it was swept up and off his face now – but not his preference for black and studs, though this seemed to be a new variation on the theme. His mouth was curled upwards slightly at one side in what was probably a smile. He looked almost unbearably handsome.

“Well,” Blake said levelly. His blood hammered in his ears. “You certainly took your time coming back for me.”

Avon raised an eyebrow and paused, as though in the year they’d been apart he’d forgotten how to deal with Blake. “There didn't seem to be any hurry. Anyway, I said you could manage very well without me.”

“It’s been so dull, though,” Blake said, “having no one to argue with.” 

Avon glanced towards the speaker, who was currently reading out a proposal to cap taxes for the wealthy, and then back to Blake. 

“No one worth arguing with,” Blake conceded as one of the councillors he’d already primed to disagree with this bill stood up and began doing so. 

Avon grinned sharply, half amused, half mocking. “I suppose you want me to take that as a compliment.”

“No. I want you to stay,” Blake said. “But I do understand why you won’t.”

“Do you? That makes a change.”

“Mm. How is being free of me, by the way? As wonderful as you’d hoped?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Avon said. 

He turned back to the speaker, and Blake worried at his bottom lip with his teeth and tried to work out what the correct response was. 

“Everything I said was true,” Avon said casually, without turning back to him. “The problem was that, once again, I’d overestimated my ability... not to think about you. Eventually I decided that if I wasn’t going to be free, I might as well be not free here. And I hear someone tried to assassinate you last week. If it’s going to happen anyway, I don’t see why I should stay away.”

“It’s a fairly regular occurrence.”

“Your security must be appalling.”

“Actually it’s rather good. Vila designed it. Only the deadliest assassins make it through to me.”

“Conversely, it’s been almost a year since anyone’s fired a gun at me,” Avon said. “If that’s not freedom, I don’t know what is.”

Blake smiled. “You decided to come back.”

Avon sighed. “Demonstrably,” he said. “Come on, Blake. Keep up.”

“No, no,” Blake said. “What I mean is - you _decided_ to come back. You made the choice and acted on it. _That_ is freedom, Avon. The chance to think and speak and act as you wish to. _That_ is what we’ve been fighting for.”

“Is it? I thought it was our irreconcilable viewpoints.”

Blake grinned. “They’re not that irreconcilable. No, I think you just like arguing.”

“ _You_ like arguing,” Avon countered. “What I like, Blake, is wealth, power and safety. You threatened that ideal. You still do, by the sounds of it.”

“But still you came back.”

“Yes,” Avon said. “I must be a fool.”

Blake leaned closer to him. “Why did you come back?” he asked, as much to give Avon the chance to say it, as because he wanted to hear it. 

“Well, now,” Avon said thoughtfully. “I suppose I am a fool. Wealth, power and safety are all very well, but,” he grinned, “in the end, I like you more.”

*


End file.
